Abstract
ADS-B is a next-generation (N-GEN) air traffic management system used to monitor the traffic of airspace and communication of aircraft in the airspace. This system allows aircraft to send the location automatically and provide situational awareness. The comparative analysis between ADS-B technology and Radar technology is also included in this article. Different types of Attacks and security issues are also mentioned.
Introduction
Demand for air traffic has been increased, the skies around the world are getting more and more crowded. According to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), by 2025 number of passengers and flights will be increased, which will have a more prominent impact on costs, flight delays, and most important on the environmental factor. Whereas air traffic control systems, using technology dating back to World War II, have remained unchanged and cannot handle the increase in traffic [1]. Volume needs to expand to accommodate space vehicles and technology ought to be developed to the integration of commercial spaces flying with conventional aviation work. With the objective to modernize the system from manual radar and radio communication to the latest technology, FAA is moving to utilize the automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast System (ADS-B) as surveillance. ADS-B is a highly precise surveillance technology.
Basically, ADS-B is an automatic monitoring unit installed on airplane that allows aircraft to broadcast the information i.e. identity, status, and location to ground station and other nearby aircraft that have the capability of ADS-B In or ADS-B out by using satellite navigation technology. This technology is recently invented which is helping to enhance the surveillance abilities of ATC and pilots. This technology is made for the advancement of security, increase the capacity of aircraft in air space, and proficiency of air traffic systems with high performance. ADS-B system is automatic, so outside mediation is not needed to transmit data. Ads-b is a dependent, coordinated monitoring system. As it relies on navigation avionics to gain information about surveillance that’s why it is called dependent. Aircraft or vehicles need common equipment to take part in the system, so it is considered cooperative. This unit has the ability to back observation administrations within the terminal and en-route airspace counting farther and maritime regions. It ought to empower numerous modern surveillance systems such as situational awareness among flight attendants and ATC. These advantages can upgrade the ATMs which are currently operational without radar, and inaccessible zones desired security level does not compromised by them. Radar technology depends on antenna other radio signals to find the aircraft’s position and location, whereas ADS-B technology replaces the radar system with a navigation satellite. The radar system had many drawbacks e.g. limitation of accuracy, range, and line of sight. Installation and maintenance of the system were much expensive.
With the passage of time software and hardware significantly updated so the old technology was unable to handle the increasing traffic demands around airspace, unable to cover most of areas around the earth. Section 2 describes the overview of the ADS-B in detail. Section 3 is about the Technology description, application, motivation, and importance of ADS-B in Air traffic management system. Section 4 contains the review of work for ADS-B also discusses comparative analysis, followed by research challenges and open issues in Section 5 Section 6 describes simulating tools and software technologies. In section 7 Conclusion and future work.
Overview of ADS-B System
ADS-B Automatic means system works autonomously without pilot or any input operator, Dependent means information about aircraft’s location depends on satellite navigation e.g.(GPS). Surveillances are a technology that provides the aircraft data such as Location, Altitude, Speed, and other monitoring data. Broadcast means broadcast data is broadcast in a given period and can be captured at the same time by ADS-B on the ground or other airplane [3].
ADS-B system is implemented on aircraft that provides location and other information regularly without the recipient’s knowledge and without waiting for an acknowledgment because ADS-B broadcasts only one way. It provides many benefits to pilots and air traffic control and the system gives the sense of awareness about the environment and weather around itself.
The ADS-B system has two main components aircraft avionics and ground stations. Aircraft avionics help to determine a plane’s location and collect data from ground stations and other planes having ADS-B. Ground station receives all data transmitted by aircraft and airport vehicles. The ground station includes transmitters and receivers as follows:
- Control stations or co-located antennas.
- Radar sensors for ATC use and Traffic Information Service-Broadcast.(TIS-B)
- Service providers for the Flight Information Service-Broadcast (FIS-B).
- FAA for aeronautical data.
ADS-B requires common equipment for aircraft and other airport vehicles to transmit and exchange information it making it a communal system. There are two subsystems of ADS-B:
ADS-B In is the ability of aircraft to receive the incoming transmission from the ground station and other aircraft equipped with this technology. ADS-B OUT is a technology through which the aircraft can measure its own position by using GNSS(global navigation satellite system) and then transmits the information, transmissions are received by ground stations and other aircraft that are equipped by ADS-B IN technology.
ADS-B Technologies
Navigation and communication systems are two main modules on which Ads-b depends a lot, commonly used as navigation as data link is GPS so ADS-B supports 3 types of data links that standardized by ICAO are:
- 1090 MHz Extended Squitter (1090ES)
- Universal access transceiver
- VDL Mode4
1090ES
In the initial implementation, 1090ES is known as the most common element. 1090 MHz is widely used on commercial traffic. 1090 MHz allows 112-bits packets to be sent twice every second. ADS-B Out is required in class A airspace because Traffic Collision Avoidance Systems (TCAS) rely on it [1]. Initial transport provided by the publication of European Mode S Regulations and final FAA ADSB out Rules. 1090ES is the preferred data link by FAA and it is an internationally approved frequency.
UAT
For general aviation aircraft UAT is most preferred due to its additional services. It transmits a larger packet than 1090ES. The size of the can be 144 bit or 272-bit per second. ADS-B Out technology is used to send packets. Aircraft can also receive weather and flight information through ADS-B In. extra information is received by the aircraft because UAT provides larger bandwidth. Class A aircraft are not allowed to use UAT [1]. It is implemented regional based.
VDL MODE 4
VDL MODE 4 may be a VHF data link that connects two mobile stations and one mobile station to the ground station. The notable feature of VDL MODE 4 is to send and receive short messages. It supports real-time applications. 25 kHz data can be transmitted through VDL MODE 4. It sets time division multiple access schemes. VDL Mode 4 can safely handle the traffic. The communication channel is divided by TDMA into time slots of 1-minute superframes. The station can transmit in each time slot [8].
Application and Importance
ADS-B applications fulfill the requirements of safety, good execution, and inter-operability for:
- ‘ ADS-b’ in Radar Air-station
- ‘ADS-B’ in non-radar air-stations
- ‘ADS-B’ in ASSC
- ‘ADS-B’ for Flight Deck
- ‘ADS-b’ for Interval management
ADS-B has two types of application
- Applications for ground uses “ADS-B Out”
- Applications for airborne uses “ADS-B In”
ADS-B out provides many benefits according to different situations, for example in airport surface surveillance shows the picture of all ground and space vehicles to ground control. ADS-B Out have 2 separation services ‘supplement 5- service’ and ‘3-nm separation’ ATC uses these services in radar based zone . In non-radar airspace, ATC provides separation ‘minima’ services by using ADS-B. ADS-B out appplications are Surveillance On Departure, ADS-B Surveillance En-Rout,e Out Surveillance On Arrival.
ADS-B In also provides potential benefits like safety, enhanced capacity, and aircraft emission decrease. It increases the sense of responsibility to keep two aircraft away from each other through delegated en-route separation.
- Increases the knowledge of situation about traffic on airport surface through traffic Information Services
- Enhance awareness of situation through Flight Information Services during flight operation
- Enhance visual approach CDTI-Assisted Visual Separation
- Send Alert through ADS-B Traffic Advisory System
- Enhance Airborne spacing and merging operation
ADS-B provides real-time data to pilots present in the flight deck and flight controller in the ground station. It Makes airspace usage efficient. Implantation of the ads-b system is less expensive to radar. Enhance aircraft safety. This technology can be used in those areas where radar is not available. ADS-B datalinks can be used to check flight information or weather depiction in General aviation. In past, these services were so costly or not available use in general aviation.
Motivation
As air travel is increasing with time there is a need to increase aircraft capacity which depends on ATC technology, association function, and ATC potential to supervise the aircraft. As aircraft capacity is getting increased separation minima between two aircraft are being reduced. To maintain proper separation minima between aircrafts, it required high-efficiency, completeness and accessibility of GPS and communication between association functions and surveillance. If the aircraft capacity increases without considering the constraints of separation minima can produce collision of aircraft as result.
A committee named Future Air Navigation system was established by ICAO. The purpose of the committee was to exceed the limits and to fulfill the forthcoming demand for aviation. So ICAO characterized a new surveillance technology named ADS-B. And the vision behind this was to fulfill the previous surveillance gaps and provide the excellent communication and safe flight. The figure shows tracking of Air traffic in real-time using ADS-B technology.
Review of work under the classification
This article demonstrates the assessment of performance and describes the anomalies that happened to the system shows how anomalies could be severe [9]. ZHANG Jun and co-authors collect data of radar and ADS-B with great accuracy and compare them. The data was asynchronous and this problem occurred when data was updated, they propose a technique to synchronize the data [10]. In order to ensure the safety of data, a comprehensive monitoring system is required this paper presents the analysis of infrastructure, classify the characteristics and identify the gaps [4]. [11] Researchers suggest encrypting the ICAO address of aircraft. It helps to maintain privacy and encrypt the identity of aircraft and actual location.
Comparative Analysis
Weather can badly affect the radar system, many airplanes had damaged due to inaccurate flight direction during bad weather. In the late 1970s this technology was great but with the passage of time air traffic was increasing radar system was unable to handle the aircraft systems. Radar technology is dependent on antennas and other communication channels. A massive amount of data had to be processed by controllers but radar screens were so congested. Radio was the only communication channel. When ATC faced any problem they had to communicate through radio but radio communication is not reliable and smooth. It was very difficult to communicate at long distances or in bad weather conditions.
On the other hand, ADS-B is getting installed in new aircraft companies. ATC can easily check the location of each and every plane individually. ADS-B unit is a totally automatic aircraft that automatically reveal its location, path of flight, and permissions to ATC. Bad weather conditions do not affect any data links. ATC can give instructions to the pilot without any active dialogue. ADS-B is more robust and reliable the radar or radio technology. ADS-B is smarter than radar. ADS-B update data much faster than radar, which means unified departures and landings, also ADS-B provides short-cut routes that lessens flight times and without delay. Aircraft ADS-B the surveillance of does no longer rely on radar ground stations, but on airborne GPS transponders.
Unlike traditional radar, working of ADS-B is on ground stations and lower-level flying and to monitor airbase and runway traffic of airports.
Research challenges and open issues
Passive attacks are easily carried out in ADS-B format due to their free and describing material. Broadcast messages from aircraft can easily eavesdrop without showing any threat to ATC. Passive attacks are the beginning of active attacks. Active attacks include insertion, deletion, and modification of massages. There are a few open issues and challenges of ADS-B are need to be discussed
- Massage collision
- Channel quality loss
- Duplicate massage
- Ground station flooding
- exposure of ADS-B data-link
- GHOST aircraft flooding
- Aircraft spoofing
- Aircraft disappearance
- False alarm attack
In the 12th conference of ICAO, the agenda of the meeting was “cyber security as a high-level impediment to implementation that should be considered as a roadmap of the development process”. They decided to make a task force in the future to help the efforts of stakeholders. The agenda of stakeholders nowadays is to address these problems. The security of ADS-B should be highly prioritized. Due to the growth of traffic loss of serious massages happens ion 90mhz. these security concerns arise due to open and cheap availability on software-defined radios. As soon as possible these issues and security concerns must need to be addressed by ATC authorities.
Simulating tools and Software Technologies
Here, in this section, we will present the tools and software required for ADS-B.
Tools
Tools required in ADS-B are following:
- Receiver
- “TSO-C166b” 1090MHz or 978 MHz “TSO-C154c”
- Processing unit
- Flight crew compartment display
Software
The following software can be used to install ADS-B:
- ADSB#
- adsbScope
- Base Station
- Globe-S-mini
- PlanePlotter
- Virtual radar server
Conclusion and future work
The goal of study was to figure out the current state of ADS-B and to highlight deficiencies of the RADAR system in supporting increasing air travel demand e.g. lack of situational awareness, inaccurate aircraft positioning limited are coverage unavailability of services in bad weather, ocean, and remote areas. And demonstrate the’ ability of ADS-B that how it meets the challenges of current surveillance. Demonstrate how the ADS-B system’s performance is way better than the radar system. Identify the performance in terms of availability, integrity, latency, continuity, and reliability.
There is a need to work on security and enhance the efficiency of ADS-B. Aircraft authorities and manufacturers need to understand the importance to equip the ‘ADS-B In’, and ‘ADS-b out’ both in aircraft. By granting the better awareness of situation to optimize the flight and crew by knowing the reducing separation, flight time, and fuel information, which was impossible before [12].
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References
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