Advanced - Surface Movement Guidance And Control System Improving Runway Safety And Efficiency

Air traffic controllers for Airservices Australia have started using Sensis Corporation's Advanced - Surface Movement Guidance and Control System (A-SMGCS) at Sydney Airport. The system's highly accurate surveillance monitors and maintains the safety of the airport's runways and taxiways in all weather conditions.

"The Sensis A-SMGCS at Sydney is providing our controllers with the situational awareness needed to continually see every aircraft and vehicle across all runways and taxiways, including during bad weather and at nighttime, for improved runway safety and predictable airport performance," said Airservices Australia General Manager Air Traffic Control, Jason Harfield. "The system's conflict detection and alerting functionality adds another layer of safety by proactively sensing potential conflicts between aircraft and vehicles and providing an audible and visual alert so controllers can quickly respond to the situation."

Combining surveillance data received from Sensis multilateration, surface movement radar and VeeLo NextGen vehicle locators, the system provides the location and identification of all aircraft and vehicles in the movement and non-movement areas. It also features Sensis Safety Logic conflict detection and alerting technology that alerts controllers in advance of any potential runway incursions. Additionally, the A-SMGCS integrates data from Airservices' flight plan system and provides real-time surface traffic information to the en route and terminal aerodrome automation system. All information is displayed on Sensis Controller Working Positions and is recorded for future playback.

"The Sydney A-SMGCS provides precise surveillance and identification information to increase the efficiency of airport operations while also enhancing safety," said John Jarrell, vice president and general manager of Sensis Air Traffic Systems. "This highly-flexible system can be expanded to accommodate future safety applications, including runway lighting and taxi route conformance monitoring, efficiency tools such as airport surface management systems, and technologies that increase capacity, for example wide area multilateration for precision runway monitoring."

Sensis A-SMGCS has been selected for more than 40 deployments around the world. In Australia, The system is also operational at Melbourne Airport and is being deployed to Brisbane and Perth Airports.

FMI: www.sensis.com, www.airservicesaustralia.com