FREQUENTIS Well Perceived as Key Partner for the ATM Industry at Europe’s Largest ATC Conference

March 10 - 12 saw the world’s biggest ATM event take centre stage at the IFEMA Feria de Madrid in Spain. Visitors saw at first hand Frequentis’ commitment to the future of ATM.
After three days of presentations, seminars, networking, congress and exhibition with the participation of top international industry experts, the World ATM Congress (WATMC), Europe’s premier forum for ATM/ATC professionals, came to an successful end. Of the 6,929 attendees and 313 conference delegates at the event, many found their way to the Frequentis booth or visited the company’s panel and presentations.

FREQUENTIS Innovations and Highlights
Frequentis once again presented a strong line-up of market-leading civil and military communications, information and automation systems and solutions at the show, reinforcing its position as technology leader and innovator with a strong commitment to the ATM industry. WATMC saw the international debut of Frequentis ATM networks and voice communication services for remote virtual tower operations. With these launches, Frequentis extends its broad range of mission-critical applications by cost-efficient converged network solutions for modern ATM, and a flexible and collaborative end-to-end IP communication solution for virtual remote tower operations.

Furthermore our thought leaders engaged with the audience to address following key topics of relevance to the current and next-generation ATM systems in Europe and worldwide:

Panel: Meeting performance scheme targets through deployment of virtual centre
This high-ranking panel, with participants from Austro Control Group, Hungarocontrol, Skyguide, NATS, EUROCONTROL and Frequentis, was hosted by Frequentis executive business consultant Bo Redeborn. The panel addressed virtual centres as a means to improve performance and reduce costs. Even though a number of technical and operational issues have to be addressed before virtual centres can be widely deployed, the ATM experts saw no major obstacles. In principle all technical requirements could be met with existing and available solutions.

Interestingly enough, some of the necessary technical upgrades could provide significant improvements even if the end goal of virtual centres is not yet decided upon.
Examples of various remote services confirmed the feasibility of independence between a geographical area of flights and the place from where the services are provided. The logical approach to pave the way for virtual centres is to establish network services that could be accessed from smart client-based controller working positions in a flexible way regardless of geographical location.

Operational acceptance and training are obviously needed, and efforts to achieve this are elements of a normal change management process. Having centralised services also fits well in an environment with virtual centres and the panel did not identify any difficulties with the free route concept being implemented across Europe. The debate concluded that efficiency and performance could be improved and costs reduced by applying the idea behind virtual centres. This is an excellent opportunity for providers that are in the position to exploit this advantage in their future solutions.

Presentation: smartGrids, Cloud, SWIM: What is needed to implement an ATM-grade network infrastructure, by Stefan Galler, Product Manager ATM Communication Solutions
New technologies and applications arise at an ever-faster pace. Increasing operational performance in this environment needs an ATM-grade network that considers your applications end-to-end.

Presentation: SWIM enabled open architecture for the advanced tower controller working position, by Günter Graf, Head of ATM Automation Solutions, and Thomas Fränzl, Business Development.
The CWP solution shows how ANSPs can benefit from a cost-efficient, futureproof and modular system that integrates products from various vendors. With this SWIM enabled open architecture, ANSPs minimise ownership costs and increase safety.

Presentation: Virtual centre application use case study: Concept of operation for multi-remote virtual tower operation, by Thomas Fränzl, Business Development, and Maarten van der Lee, Product Manager ATM Communication Solutions
New concepts such as the virtual centre and multi-remote tower operations will change the CONOPS of ANSPs worldwide. Only a holistic implementation of tower communication, navigation and surveillance applications brings true cost savings.

Presentation: Income generation through modern AIM infrastructure, by Joachim Lennarz, Business Unit Manager Aeronautical Information Management
Apart from the basic services and products that ANSPs need to offer in AIM, a number of initiatives can help ANSPs to generate income in a modern AIM system and get a return on the initial system investment.

As Hannu Juurakko, Vice President ATM Civil at Frequentis, put it: “The WATMC is a most effective platform for information exchange and networking in the ATM industry. It was wonderful to share and demonstrate the future of ATM communication and information management with our many clients and friends in the ATC community. We look forward to returning in 2016.”