Boeing Combines Satellite, Radar For Air Traffic Management

Boeing [BA] Air Traffic Management demonstrated new flight-surveillance technology that uses processors to combine radar- and satellite-derived location and identity data for display on a single screen.

“Rather than three potentially confusing blips representing the same airplane appearing separately on the radar screen, our demonstration flights show we can ‘fuse’ signals to provide more accurate tracking,” said Dave Jones, Boeing’s Global Communications, Navigation and Surveillance Systems program manager.

The fused location data, once in the air-traffic management system, can be distributed to multiple users, including the military, airlines, weather centers and other aircraft over a secure network. It could potentially increase both air-traffic-control efficiency and airspace security, Boeing added.