The
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
National Airspace System Voice Switch (NVS) project, a part of the
Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen), aims to establish a single set of scalable voice switches that can support a dynamic flow of air traffic. Voice communications network flexibility is essential for the
Federal Aviation Administration
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic m ...
(FAA) to increase air traffic control network flexibility.
Description
Voice communications is a fundamental part of providing air traffic control services. Both air-to-ground and ground-to-ground voice communications are essential for the
en route
''En route'' may refer to:
* ''En Route'' (novel), an 1895 novel by Joris-Karl Huysmans
* ''En Route'' (film), a 2004 German movie directed by Jan Krüger
* En-route chart, in aeronautics
* enRoute (credit card), Air Canada's credit card divisi ...
, flight service and
terminal
Terminal may refer to:
Computing Hardware
* Terminal (electronics), a device for joining electrical circuits together
* Terminal (telecommunication), a device communicating over a line
* Computer terminal, a set of primary input and output dev ...
domains of aircraft flights to provide safe, orderly and efficient flow of air traffic.
In the early years of the twenty-first century,
air traffic control
Air traffic control (ATC) is a service provided by ground-based air traffic controllers who direct aircraft on the ground and through a given section of controlled airspace, and can provide advisory services to aircraft in non-controlled airs ...
air-ground and ground-ground
voice communications are managed on a
geographical
Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and ...
basis. The equipment used is a mixture of seventeen different types, some already 20 years old.
Current voice communications switches are very static, and the ability to adjust the
airspace for varying loads very limited. An air traffic controller in
Miami
Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...
in winter time may be over-loaded, whilst in the remainder of the year under-loaded. During the same periods, an air traffic controller in
Minneapolis
Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...
may be under-loaded in winter, and over-loaded at other times. With an inflexible system, the solution has to be to physically move controllers to cope with the higher workloads.
NVS aims to enable voice switch flexibility by allowing the
airspace to be dynamically reconfigured according to workload, without the physical movement of staff. So, an air traffic controller in Minneapolis could be logically reassigned to Miami without a physical movement being necessary. A migration from
analog
Analog or analogue may refer to:
Computing and electronics
* Analog signal, in which information is encoded in a continuous variable
** Analog device, an apparatus that operates on analog signals
*** Analog electronics, circuits which use analog ...
communications to
Voice over Internet Protocol
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...
(VOIP) is also being considered.
Benefits
NVS will enable FAA air traffic control to establish a network-based communications system, to evolve towards flexible communications routing that provides dynamic re-sectorisation, resource reallocation, airspace redesign, and improved aircraft flow capacity.
NVS will:
* use
open systems standards and/or
commercial off-the-shelf
Commercial off-the-shelf or commercially available off-the-shelf (COTS) products are packaged or canned (ready-made) hardware or software, which are adapted aftermarket to the needs of the purchasing organization, rather than the commissioning of ...
equipment
* reduce equipment
inventories
Inventory (American English) or stock (British English) refers to the goods and materials that a business holds for the ultimate goal of resale, production or utilisation.
Inventory management is a discipline primarily about specifying the sha ...
of out-of-date switch types
* reduce acquisition, training and maintenance costs by reducing the number of voice switch designs
* improve equipment availability
* enable flexible allocation of access to communications resources to meet both strategic and tactical demands
* enable flexible
user access profile definitions to assure secure access to the system and to enable defined roles to be performed
* provide
scalability
Scalability is the property of a system to handle a growing amount of work by adding resources to the system.
In an economic context, a scalable business model implies that a company can increase sales given increased resources. For example, a ...
* provide a
fault-tolerant system
Fault tolerance is the property that enables a system to continue operating properly in the event of the failure of one or more faults within some of its components. If its operating quality decreases at all, the decrease is proportional to the ...
.
Development
Northrop Grumman
Northrop Grumman Corporation is an American multinational aerospace and defense technology company. With 90,000 employees and an annual revenue in excess of $30 billion, it is one of the world's largest weapons manufacturers and military techn ...
Corporation announced the demonstration of the company's Next Generation Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) Voice Switch to officials of the FAA in preparation for the upcoming National Airspace System Voice Switch program competition. The demonstration was the second phase of Northrop Grumman's response to a Request for Information issued by the FAA for the NVS program.
[ all Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20091116-904357.html/ref>
]
References
{{Reflist
External links
Northrop Grumman NAS Voice Switch
Federal Aviation Administration
Voice over IP