1

Surveillance Services Info Days

Brussels, 6-7 December 2017

ASTERIX Making the Link

Alexander Engel

EUROCONTROL ASTERIX Manager

TLP: GREEN

2/29

A

ASTERIX

S T E R I X

All purpose

STructured

Eurocontrol suRveillance Information eXchange

3/29

• Set of documents

ASTERIX

• Bit level definition of a data exchange format

• Part 1: Basic Principles of ASTERIX

• Parts 2ff: Category specifications > applications

• Cat. 048/034: Radar

• Cat. 021/023: ADS-B

• Cat. 020/019: Multilateration

4/29

Basic Layout of ASTERIX Messages until Revision 2.1 of Part 1

ASTERIX

Record

Basic Layout of ASTERIX Messages as of Revision 2.2 of Part 1

Record

5/29

Data Items: Basic element to encode information

Description at bit-level

ASTERIX

Different Layouts (all described in Part 1)

Fixed Length

Extensible

Repetitive

Compound

6/29

User Application Profile (UAP)

ASTERIX

Sequence of Data Items in ASTERIX Record

Position in Field Specification (FSPEC)

Field Specification (FSPEC)

Presence of Data Items in ASTERIX Record

7/29 ASTERIX

8/29 ASTERIX

9/29 ASTERIX

Cat=020 Len=??? 100010010100011100010100

10/29 ASTERIX

Cat=020 Len=??? 100010010100011100010100 SAC/SIC

ASTERIX

Cat=020 Len=??? 100010010100011100010100 SAC/SIC Position

11/29

ASTERIX

Cat=020 Len=??? 100010010100011100010100 SAC/SIC Position

12/29

ASTERIX

Cat=020 Len=??? 100010010100011100010100 SAC/SIC Position Velocity

13/29

ASTERIX

Cat=020 Len=??? 100010010100011100010100 SAC/SIC Position Velocity Target ID

14/29

ASTERIX

Cat=020 Len=??? 100010010100011100010100 SAC/SIC Position Velocity Target ID

Height

15/29

ASTERIX

Cat=020 Len=??? 100010010100011100010100 SAC/SIC Position Velocity Target ID

Height

16/29

ASTERIX

Cat=020 Len=??? 100010010100011100010100 SAC/SIC Position Velocity Target ID

Height MSG

17/29

ASTERIX

Cat=020 Len=??? 100010010100011100010100 SAC/SIC Position Velocity Target ID

Height MSG Cont. Dev.

18/29

ASTERIX

Cat=020 Len=31 100010010100011100010100 SAC/SIC Position Velocity Target ID

Height MSG Cont. Dev.

19/29

ASTERIX Evolution

ASTERIX

Backwards Compatibility!

Length only for block, not for record (old layout)

Reserved Expansion Field: explicit length

Limited number of additions

New category: current category +32

New layout: only one record > known length

unlimited addition of data items

20/29

ASTERIX Governence

ASTERIX

Globally accepted Standard!

Contact: EUROCONTROL ASTERIX Manager

ASTERIX Management Group (AMG) und SUR SG

international representation

Approval of Specifications

21/29

THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR ATTENTION

ALEXANDER ENGEL

EUROCONTROL ASTERIX Manager

alexander.engel@eurocontrol.int

Questions:

asterix@eurocontrol.int

23

Surveillance Services Info Days

Brussels, 6-7 December 2017

The ASTERIX Decoder/Encoder Hackathon and what is made out of it

Benjamin Cramet

Surveillance Expert

TLP: GREEN

Aiming high to reach…

Capture new ideas

Attract talented people

Keep cost to the minimum

Showcase that Safety

constrains are not heavy on

software

Source: Kecko CC BY 2.0

Bringing disruptive technologies through out-of-the-box thinking 24/29

Aiming high to reach…

Using Agile methodology for

developing Operational Software

Go Open Source once ready

Help anyone using ASTERIX to

stay up-to-date with Asterix Edition

version

Drive down the cost of update

Radars, ADS-B station, trackers…

enter your presentation title

The ASTERIX Decoder/Encoder 25/29

Source: crza CC BY-NC-ND 2,0

To make something new out of the old

Source: KostadIn Hrlstov CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

• ASTERIX has been around for 25 years

• Still facing the same problem

• There are as many Asterix decoder as there

is Radarist

• Grab innovation

The ASTERIX Decoder/Encoder 26/29

EUROCONTROL Hackathon

32 competitors

15 nationalities

16,000 visits to the website

How do you define success:

Number of smiles ?

The ASTERIX Decoder/Encoder 27/29

One year later - What does the software do? ASTERIX specification JSON format

ASTERIX

DataStream

Decoded ASTERIX in

an Hashmap ASTERIX DECODING

JSON Validation

API ASTERIX ENCODING ASTERIX

DataStream

The ASTERIX Decoder/Encoder 28/29

Next Steps

Make it available to everyone as Open Source

Release date - 12/12/2017

Integrate the CODEC into ARTAS, SASS-C and SDDS

To be planned

See what the world makes of it….

The software is SWAL 3 compliant

Want to use it for your Operational Surveillance chain ?

Source: David Flores - CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The ASTERIX Decoder/Encoder 29/29

Dream on…

Build the community around the

CODEC

Put in place the dual license

model

Make Open Source software

Take back our role as

Eurocontrollers

Source: Alexandre Dulaunoy – CC By SA 2.0

The ASTERIX Decoder/Encoder 30/29