Collision risk assessment of reduced aircraft separation minima in procedural airspace using advanced communication and navigation

With the advancement of Communication, Navigation and Surveillance (CNS) technolo-gies such as space-based Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast/Contract (ADS-B/C), large separation minima may be reduced in procedural airspaces. It is of great significance to know the upper limit of the Reduced Separation Minima (RSM) for a procedural airspace and the corre-sponding consequences on collision risk with specifics of the advanced ADS-B and control interven-tion model. In this work, an interactive software is first developed for collision risk estimation. This software integrates the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) collision risk models for lateral and longitudinal collision risk calculation for the Singapore procedural airspace. Results demonstrate that the lateral and longitudinal collision risk of Singapore procedural airspace with respect to current control procedures meets the ICAO Target Level of Safety (TLS) standard. Moreover, the feasibility of reducing the horizontal separations implemented in the Singapore pro-cedural airspace with respect to advanced CNS techniques is investigated. It is found that if advanced CNS technologies are applied, then the current 50-NM lateral and longitudinal separa-tion standards can be reduced to 22 NM (1 NM = 1.825 km) and 20 NM, respectively, to meet the TLS standards based on current demand. A method is then devised to expand the traffic demand by p for p 2 [10%, 200%]. It is found that the minimum lateral and longitudinal separa-tions can be reduced from 50 NM to be within the range of [23, 31] NM, and 20 NM, respectively, for p 2 [10%, 200%], while the collision risk still meets the TLS standards.(c) 2022 Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Production and hosting by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).