Air-traffic control with SAE technology

Description

Different interfaces and protocol formats are used to make available the operational states and alarms of these air traffi c control facilities to operating personnel at airports and centrally at the ATCCV in Vienna (Air Traffic Control Centre Vienna). The capability to control air traffic control systems emanates from these systems.

The technical air traffi c control equipment is connected at the respective airport via a subsystem. All of the data volume is relayed to the system in the ATCCV over active redundant lines. The system in the ATCCV portrays all states of the systems in Austria. In the control direction, airports can only operate their own area, and from the ATCCV, air traffi c control facilities across the whole of Austria can be controlled.

An expansion of the existing SMA system (of former VA TECH SAT GmbH) was necessary for monitoring of the new tower at Salzburg Airport in terms of infrastructure and power engineering.

The telecontrol system supplied comprises a redundant fire zone isolated data node (FW-5000/FW-50), and small FW-5 telecontrol systems in the building level distributors. These communicate with each other over the existing SMA LAN. System and payload data is sent directly by the redundant data node to the existing SAT250 SCALA visualisation system provided on site.

Three different redundancy types have been implemented on telecontrol level:

• The FW-5 stations connected over TCP-IP maintain a connection to both data nodes and send all data points in the monitor direction.
• The external IEC 60870-5-101 external couplings connected to the data nodes over V.24 interfaces work with interface redundancy. This means only one data node retains the connection to the respective external station. The second data node eavesdrops this coupling and assumes communication with no interruptions in the event of a fault with the active connection.
• The local FW-50 stations connected over TCP-IP maintain a connection to the respective data nodes and send the data read by the peripheral modules and Modbus interfaces in the monitor direction.

The data nodes were fully assembled and mounted at our factory in standalone cabinets measuring 2000 x 800 x 800 mm (H x W x D). Reichle & De-Massari rails were used for wiring within the standalone cabinets. Setup, installation and start-up were carried out on site by our partner Greylogix SAT.

Configuration of the required data points using setIT and codeIT, and implementation into the visualisation system, were carried out by the TCMS team (Technical Control and Monitoring Systems) of Austro Control.

“I regarded implementation of redundancy provided and modifi ed for ACG in the SAE systems as the greatest challenge in this project. The development department and project management at SAE faced up to this task meticulously, vehemently and ultimately successfully. This enabled the project objectives of ACG for the start-up of the new tower in Salzburg to be met on schedule.”
Project manager Margit Lassl