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Suvarnabhumi » Suvarnabhumi Airport’s Integrated Air Traffic Control System

Sunday, July 20th, 2008

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With one of the tallest air traffic control towers in the world and one of the most automated Air Traffic Control Systems with the latest in safety equipment, Bangkok’s new airport , Suvarnabhumi, is poised for the kind of rapid traffic growth expected in Asia during the next few decades.

It’s not that Suvarnabhumi Airport hasn’t had its problems. Its $3.8-billion construction cost has been a matter of political controversy since a military coup last September ousted the elected government that conceived the project. And runway cracks, though repairable, and other less publicized defects have been spotlighted by critics intent on proving that the previous government made a mess of things. Still, the green-field facility has room for more runways in the future, and it has the potential to become one of the main aviation hubs in the region.

And as at major airports in Australia and China, Thales of France has played a big role in fitting the new Air Traffic Control tower and radar approach control facility here with the latest technology. Thales’s Australian unit, which develops the software for these systems, is also involved.

Thales’s “Tecos” flight data processing system in the tower is linked to an Advanced Surface Movement Guidance and Control System called “Streams,” and both are also connected to Eurocat X (for export) in the approach control facility. This is the first time Thales has automated the Eurocat-Streams-Tecos interaction, says Stephane Paul, a Thales systems engineer.

Because of this high level of integration, Suvarnabhumi approach controllers can coordinate traffic handoffs to the tower without talking over the radio or by telephone.

In fact, as an aircraft pushes back from the gate, information is relayed automatically to several different controller positions simultaneously. On the Streams display of the airport surface (including runways, taxiways and gates), controllers in the tower can see that the aircraft is moving away from the gate. And displays in the approach control room show that there’s an aircraft taxiing that will be taking off in 5-20 min.

Paul explains that, if necessary, controllers in the tower can still talk to each other and to the approach room when a situation becomes too complex to rely on an automatic handoff. But most of the time, the seamless digital transfer makes operations much more efficient than they would be with previous-generation equipment. Tecos, for example, eliminates the use of paper strips, as everyone can see all of the pertinent data on a flight just by looking at a computer screen.

Since Thales has sold 260 of its Eurocat X systems to 55 nations, this integrated data-flow development for Thailand is one that may interest a lot of other customers in future upgrades, Paul says. Australia began using Thales’s Eurocat as the basis for its new A$350-million ($290-million) Australian Advanced Air Traffic System commissioned in 2000. Most of the development of the Eurocat X system being sold worldwide since then has been performed by Thales’s Australian affiliate in Melbourne.

Suvarnabhumi is also equipped with a Thales STAR 2000 primary S-band radar with a 60-90-mi. range and an RSM 970S monopulse secondary surveillance radar with a 250- naut.-mi. range.

During an airport tour for a group of Air Traffic Control specialists conducted by Aeronautical Radio of Thailand (Aerothai), this Aviation Week & Space Technology editor observed the operation of the tower’s surface surveillance system display. It showed aircraft pushing back from the gate and taxiing toward the runway as other aircraft were landing, taking off or taxing in toward the gate area. Cars, vans and trucks on the ramp equipped with “vehicle location unit” electronics can also be shown on the display. This day, the weather was clear; but in reduced visibility, a surface movement system would be valuable for controllers, who could monitor all traffic at the airport and even aircraft approaching the runway on short final.

The new Bangkok airport has two 60-meter-wide runways, one 4,000 meters (13,120 ft.) long and the other 3,700 meters, with parallel taxiways to accommodate simultaneous departures and arrivals. Currently, 76 flight operations can be handled per hour, and there are plans to add two more runways in later phases of construction.

Terma Radar Systems of Denmark provided Suvarnabhumi‘s surface movement radar and Sensis Corp. of Syracuse, N.Y., the multilateration system to track the position of aircraft.

Multilateration relies on transponder response to interrogation that can be received at different antenna sites on the airport. By measuring time difference of arrival, multilateration can pinpoint an aircraft’s position within 5 meters at the airport, and it provides twice-per-second updates, much faster than a rotating radar dish.

Marc Viggiano, president of Sensis Air Traffic Systems Div., believes surface surveillance like multilateration can help airports safely adjust to growing traffic, and the technology also can help air navigation service providers transition to using Automatic Dependent Surveillance- Broadcast in the future.

Meanwhile, a key feature of the Suvarnabhumi tower is that controllers have a 360 degree view of the airport surface from their unusually high 132.2-meter perch. Aerothai says this is the tallest Air Traffic Control tower in the world.

Nevertheless, the bragging rights over height isn’t as important as the fact that Suvarnabhumi‘s affords controllers an exceptional view of the runways, ramps and gates. And there’s plenty to see: The new airport has a total area of 32.4 sq. km. (12.5 sq. mi.) versus just 13.3 sq. km. for London Heathrow, which is a much more compact airfield that was built for the Royal Air Force as a transport base near the end of World War II. The two parallel runways at Heathrow are separated by 1,400 meters, compared with slightly more than 2,000 meters at Suvarnabhumi.

Aerothai organized the Suvarnabhumi tower tour for the 300 delegates who attended an Air Traffic Control Association conference, which spotlighted the need to improve cooperation between civil and military ATC agencies worldwide. The new Bangkok airport handles mostly civil traffic, and can accommodate up to 45 million travelers annually and nearly twice that with expanded facilities by 2015.

At 563,000 sq. meters, the first terminal with 51 gates is one of the largest in the world, and a second one is planned along with satellite facilities. This will take the ultimate capacity from 45 million passengers per year to 100 million while doubling cargo capacity to 6.4 million metric tons per year.

Murphy/Jahn Inc., a Chicago-based company, designed the airport and its interior spaces, which display many remarkable examples of traditional Thai sculpture and paintings. (Source: David Hughes / Aviation Week & Space Technology)

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