Iceland creates transatlantic surveillance corridor

Icelandic Civil Aviation Administration, Isavia, have successfully taken COMSOFT’s Quadrant ADS B surveillance solution into operation, enhancing safety, accuracy and surveillance coverage of Iceland’s control area of 5.4 million square kilometres.

Isavia manages one of the largest airspaces in the world from the North Pole almost to Scotland, and from the Greenwich Meridian in the East to west of Greenland. Quadrant ADS-B ground stations from COMSOFT are now fully operational throughout Iceland and this new surveillance layer is considered an important step towards performance based navigation in this region.

Next to this achievement COMSOFT’s next generation surveillance data distribution system (SDDS-NG) has been implemented, to facilitate a uniform connection of surveillance sensors, using the ASTERIX standard. Further ADS-B surveillance for Greenland and the Faroe Islands, supplied by Saab, has also been integrated to create a transatlantic surveillance corridor allowing a reduction of aircraft separation, and thus fewer restrictions on aircraft routing and altitude compared to oceanic separation, resulting in reduced fuel consumption and lower CO2 emissions.

The new Icelandic ADS-B ground system, supplied by German ATM expert COMSOFT, will provide air traffic controllers with highly accurate and more frequent aircraft position information. Additionally COMSOFT deployed ARTAS, which is now one of the most advanced and well-established surveillance data processing systems in the world and its ability to act as an enabler for ADS-B and WAM makes it an important technology for the future of air traffic management.

Guðmundur J. Kristjánsson, Project Manager, Isavia stated: “With the installation of [the] COMSOFT ADS-B surveillance solution the coverage of Iceland’s huge control area has been strengthened to meet the increasing demands of our service, safely tackling growing air traffic numbers as annual tourist numbers continue to increase.”

COMSOFT’s superior Quadrant ADS-B sensors are the German expert’s lightweight and cost-efficient alternative to conventional radar surveillance. The low power consumption and low bandwidth make it an economical option and its robust design, built for extreme weather conditions, mean Iceland’s glacial landscape and icy temperatures present no challenge for the tough technology. Thanks to the exceptional range of the Quadrant sensors, far exceeding 250 NM, the network can successfully support the vast Reykjavik control area, while advanced signal processing techniques allow optimised detection ensuring that position is typically updated much more frequently than regular radar.

SDDS-NG is a highly versatile system for the exchange, conversion and distribution of any kind of surveillance data in heterogeneous ATC/ATM environments and was an ideal solution for Iceland to manage the data from various radar sources.

COMSOFT will be exhibiting their Quadrant ADS-B solution at World ATM Congress in Madrid, March 10-12 at stand #1135.