Global air-traffic management

{{Unreferenced, date=December 2009 Global air-traffic management (GATM) is a concept for satellite-based

Communication, navigation and surveillance Communication, navigation and surveillance (CNS) are the main functions that form the infrastructure for air traffic management, and ensure that air traffic is safe and efficient. Functions The CNS has the following three main functions. Communi ...

and

air traffic management 334x334px, Air traffic management (ATM) is an aviation term encompassing all systems that assist aircraft to depart from an aerodrome, transit airspace, and land at a destination aerodrome, consisting of air traffic services (ATS) including air t ...

. 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 ...

and the

International Civil Aviation Organization The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO, ) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that coordinates the principles and techniques of international air navigation, and fosters the planning and development of international a ...

, a specialized agency of the United Nations, established GATM standards to keep air travel safe and effective in increasingly crowded worldwide air space. Efforts are being made worldwide to test and implement new technologies that will allow GATM to efficiently support air traffic control. Airservices Australia ADS-B initiative is one of the major implementation programs in this field. This initiative will facilitate the certification of this new technology allowing further implementation. The two core satellite constellations are the

Global Positioning System The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of the global navigation satellite sys ...

(GPS) of the US and the

Global Navigation Satellite System A satellite navigation or satnav system is a system that uses satellites to provide autonomous geo-spatial positioning. It allows satellite navigation devices to determine their location (longitude, latitude, and altitude/elevation) to high pr ...

(GLONASS) of Russia/India. The third constellation will be the European Union

Galileo system Galileo is a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) that went live in 2016, created by the European Union through the European Space Agency (ESA), operated by the European Union Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA), headquartered in P ...

when it becomes fully operational. These systems provide independent capabilities and can be used in combination with future core constellations and augmentation systems. Signals from core satellite are received by ground reference stations and any errors in the signals are identified. Each station in the network relays the data to area-wide master stations where correction information for specific geographical areas is computed. The correction message is prepared and uplinked to a

geostationary communication satellite A geosynchronous satellite is a satellite in geosynchronous orbit, with an orbital period the same as the Earth's rotation period. Such a satellite returns to the same position in the sky after each sidereal day, and over the course of a day tra ...

(GEO) via a ground uplink station. This message is broadcast to receivers on board aircraft flying within the broadcast coverage area of the system. The system is known in the US as WAAS (

Wide Area Augmentation System The Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) is an air navigation aid developed by the Federal Aviation Administration to augment the Global Positioning System (GPS), with the goal of improving its accuracy, integrity, and availability. Essentia ...

), in Europe as EGNOS (

European Geostationary Navigation Overlay System The European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) is a satellite-based augmentation system (SBAS) developed by the European Space Agency and EUROCONTROL on behalf of the European Commission. Currently, it supplements the GPS by repor ...

), in Japan as MSAS (

MTSAT Satellite Based Augmentation System Multifunctional Transport Satellites (MTSAT) were a series of weather and aviation control satellites. They are replaced by Himawari 8 on 7 July 2015. They were geostationary satellites owned and operated by the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infr ...

) and in India as GAGAN (

GPS-aided geo-augmented navigation The GPS-aided GEO augmented navigation (GAGAN) is an implementation of a regional satellite-based augmentation system (SBAS) by the Government of India. It is a system to improve the accuracy of a GNSS receiver by providing reference signals. T ...

). The system employs various techniques to correct equatorial anomalies. The advantage of the system is, it is global in scope and it has the potential to support all phases of flight providing a seamless global navigation guidance. This could eliminate the need for a variety of ground and airborne systems that were designed to meet specific requirements for certain phases of flight. Standard and recommended practices for the air traffic management based on a global navigation satellite system are developed by

ICAO The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO, ) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that coordinates the principles and techniques of international air navigation, and fosters the planning and development of international a ...

(International Civil Aviation Organization). Thus the system has to meet ICAO standards to become operational. Air traffic control Satellite navigation systems