LIMITATIONS OF THE CURRENT SURVEILLANCE SYSTEMS AND THE POTENTIAL OF

AUTOMATIC DEPENDENT SURVEILLANCE-BROADCAST (ADS-B)

Busyairah Syd Ali1,a , Washington Yotto Ochieng1,b
a

Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom

b
b.syd-ali09@imperial.ac.uk; w.ochieng@imperial.ac.uk

ABSTRACT. The need for capacity to accommodate continuing growth in demand for air travel and the
utilization of airspace are constrained by the limitations of the current Air Traffic Management (ATM)
system. One of the reasons for this is the difficulty in reducing the separation between aircraft without
jeopardizing safety. Separation minima are in turn constrained by human factors; technologies that
support Communication, Navigation and Surveillance (CNS) functions; procedures, and contextual
environment. The CNS systems provide air traffic controllers with the information necessary to ensure the
specified separation between aircraft and efficient management of airspace, and assistance to flight crew
for safe navigation. However, the technologies used currently are inadequate. In particular, the limitations
of the current surveillance systems and methods include lack of coverage in remote areas and low
performance in terms of accuracy, integrity, continuity and availability particularly in high density traffic
areas including airports, with a negative consequence on capacity and safety. Automatic Dependent
Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) technology has been proposed to address these limitations and accrue
benefits including improved situational awareness for all relevant stakeholders, enhanced capacity and
safety. Its scalability and adaptability should facilitate its use in general aviation and in ground vehicles.
This should, in principle, provide affordable, effective surveillance of air and ground traffic, even on airport
taxiways and runways, and in airspace where radar is ineffective or unavailable. This paper analyses the
limitations in the current surveillance systems based on a detailed literature review augmented by
analysis of safety data from Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSP). The analysis results are used to
derive a set of causal factors for incidents due to the limitations of the current surveillance systems, and
as input to the assessment of the capability of the ADS-B system.
Keywords: Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast, air travel demand, causal factor, surveillance
system.