Solution Provider and Consultant to the Air Traffic Management Domain

Company Frequentis Comsoft GmbH
Date 08.03.2013

United Arab Emirates General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) has taken a big step forward on their way to introduce Wide Area Multilateration surveillance into their ATM system.

COMSOFT has completed the project to upgrade GCAA’s ATM Surveillance Tracker to the next generation: ARTAS 8. The market leading ARTAS tracker forms the surveillance data processing core of GCAA’s advanced PRISMA ATM system at the Sheikh Zayed Centre in Abu Dhabi. The ARTAS 8 platform had been installed in the GCAA Resarch and Dataset lab back in 2010. As the system has proven extremely reliable in operation, GCAA purchased three additional units: One ARTAS system went into operation in the main ACC, a second one deliveres surveillance service in the EACC and another unit is being used by their training department for simulation purposes.

The outstanding accuracy, performance and reliability of ARTAS set the stage for an exemplary success story throughout Europe as well as in the Emirates. With ARTAS 8, GCAA is now ready to benefit from WAM data in the air situation picture provided to the ATCOs: ARTAS 8 is the enabler for the data fusion of Wide Area Multilateration with classical radar, Mode S and ADS-B, maximizing performance while optimising costs.

Further important new features of ARTAS 8 consist in the enhanced support of ADS-B (now including all DO260, DO260A and DO260B transponders), as well as the simplification of the system design. The amount of required hardware nodes has been minimised to two nodes while at the same time processing power has been increased considerably.

With the implementation of the ARTAS 8 project, GCAA has set a further shining example: the transition to ARTAS 8 was achieved within the operational PRISMA ATM system without any degradation of Air Traffic Service provision, i.e. GCAA’s heart of surveillance processing was upgraded to the next generation within the live system without any impact on the Air Traffic Controllers’ performance. This could only be achieved by detailed and thorough transition planning and the collaboration with a reliable and experienced industry partner.

By successfully introducing ARTAS 8, GCAA not only reinforces its pioneering position amongst ANSPs, but also lays the foundations to build upon in the future, taking into account the upcoming operational integration of WAM and the ever-increasing demands and challenges for an ANSP playing a central role in the region.

COMSOFT GmbH was established in 1979 and has been active in the ATC domain for over 20 years. The company enjoys a worldwide reputation in this market.

For further information, please visit our website at www.comsoft.aero or contact:
pia.kusterer@comsoft.aero

Contact

Frequentis Comsoft GmbH
Wachhausstr. 5a
76227 Karlsruhe
Germany
  • +49 721 94 97 - 0