EUROCAE Paves the Way for Alternative Technology Primary Radars

The leading European organization for the development of international aviation standards has published its Technical Specification for an Independent Non-Cooperative Surveillance (INCS) System.

EUROCAE, the European Organisation for Civil Aviation Equipment, is a body that draws together specialists from operators, air navigation service providers and suppliers to address challenges and standardize solutions for future airspace needs.

Working Group 103 was tasked to review the application of new technologies to the role of ATC primary surveillance as members faced issues of:

• Pressure on frequency allocation
• Escallating through life cost
• Radars vs windfarms
• ‘Not in my back yard’ protests
• Availability of alternate technologies

These could include, amongst others, continuous wave (CW) radar, wide area multi-lateration (WAM) networks, passive bi-static and passive multi-static solutions.

Each of these would take users and particularly procurement teams well out of their comfort zone, as none can be defined by traditional references to wave-length, azimuth accuracy, pulse characteristics and so on.

It is here that the working group came up with the inspired ‘equivalence’ idea of stating Performance Levels (PL) for 3 and 5 NM separation tied to the surveillance standard, a basic 1990s 2D S-band active rotating radar, as defined in Eurocontrol ESASSP. In simple terms, each INCS requirement and verification methodology is aligned to its ESASSP equivalent to allow a technology agnostic read across.