COMSOFTASTERIXAll-Purpose Structured Eurocontrol

Surveillance Information Exchange

ASTERIX is the international standard for surveillance data.

The format has proven to be an extremely powerful and

flexible basis for a wide range of uses. Today a comprehensive

set of COMSOFT ASTERIX systems and tools supports the market.

ASTERIX stands for All-purposeStructured Eurocontrol Surveil-lance Information Exchange. It was defined in the late eighties to overcome the deficiencies of the existing variety of national and vendor-specific formats and protocols.

Serving as an intermediate format, which can convey all theinformation present in any of the

existing surveillance data formats,ASTERIX contributes strongly to the standardization within the surveillance domain.

Based on a flexible structural base, ASTERIX is open to exten-sions resulting from developmentsin surveillance and surveillance data processing technology, as well as with respect to differentapplications using the format.

Highlights

● Proven powerful and flexible surveillance data format

● Supports latest developments incommunication technology

● Provides ideal support for migration from older formats

● Covers all surveillance sectors of ATC

● Chosen format for EuropeanRadar Data Networks (RADNETs)

● Comprehensive range of ASTERIXtools and systems available

● COMSOFT provides the world-wide only officially qualifiedASTERIX Reference System and Test Tool

The easy exchange of surveillance data within and between

countries has always been a main objective of air traffic control.

ASTERIX was devised to implement this. It represents an efficient

and powerful surveillance data format into which all national and

proprietary formats can be converted without loss of information.

What is ASTERIX?

CommunicationPerspective

In ISO/OSI terminology, ASTERIX is an application and presentationlayer standard (ISO Layers 6/7) anddoes not prescribe a specific link or transport protocol to support it.This has the invaluable advantagethat ASTERIX can be used over awide range of underlying transportlinks, including LAN and WAN protocols of the TCP/IP and ISO/OSI stacks (see figure).

Categories

One of ASTERIX' central concepts is that of data categories. The for-mat defines up to 255 categories,each catering for the transfer of aspecific kind of surveillance-relateddata. The most important are:

0 Time synchronization messages

1 Monoradar target reports2 Monoradar service

messages3 Synthetic air situation

picture (MADAP)4 Safety nets alarms8,9 Weather data10,11 Ground surveillance data17,18 Mode S radar data21,23 ADS-B data30,31, Synthetic air situation 32,252 data (ARTAS Data)34,48 Target report and service

messages62,63 System track data and

status messages65 SDPS service status

messages150,151, Exchange of flight data 152 messages (ADMAR)253 Remote station monitoring

and control190 Exchange of processed air

situation (Mil.)128,129 Military ASTERIX

A specific set of data items is provided for every category. These represent the smallest unitsof information and together form an ASTERIX record. The length of the messages is minimized bytransmitting only those data items that contain significant information. A compact encoding of the information as well as avoiding redundancy as much as possible, aids in length reduction andimproves efficiency.

UAP

An ASTERIX User Application Profile(UAP) enables the customization tothe number and type of data itemsused within a certain application,tailoring the exchange data formatto a specific use, e.g. for a country-wide sub-network.

Timestamping

Another important feature of ASTERIXis the support of absolute (UTC) time-stamping at the surveillance datasource, rendering ASTERIX especiallysuited for applications like multi-radar tracking relying on highly synchronized timing.

ASTERIX Layers

History of ASTERIX

a Part of Comsoft’s History

ASTERIX Products & Solutions

COMSOFT provides a large range of native ASTERIX-processing

systems and tools for many domains of air traffic control.

All products are based on an open, modular architecture and

incorporate today's forefront technology.

ASTERIX was originally specified inthe late eighties within the contextof the 4-State Integration Programbetween Belgium, Germany, Luxem-bourg and the Netherlands. Today itis a major cornerstone of the EATM(Programme for Performance En-hancement in European Air TrafficManagement) a program which hasthe ultimate goal of establishing a homogeneous European ATC infrastructure.

In 1989 COMSOFT, German ATC systems provider, was awarded thecontract for the world's first imple-mentation of ASTERIX. This includedthe development of an RMCDE(Radar Message Conversion &Distribution Equipment), as well asthe development and installation ofthe RADNET (Radar Data DistributionNetwork) based on RMCDEs. Fromthe beginning the RMCDE wasdevised as a native ASTERIX engine.Over the years COMSOFT has builtup a network of around thirty nodes,with ASTERIX as the unique internal format used.

Being the first company to imple-ment ASTERIX, COMSOFT has withtime gathered incomparable expertisein the practical use of the format. Up to now the company has imple-mented close to 30 conversions fromand to other radar data formats.Today COMSOFT can offer a largespectrum of ASTERIX systems andtools, belonging to the most mature solutions on the market.

In 1998, COMSOFT's RAPS-II product underwent an EUROCONTROL qualification process to attest its eligibility as a universal ASTERIX TestTool and Reference Product. In 2003the qualification was renewed, nowcovering also all Mode S, ADS,Ground Surveillance and new ARTASdata categories. With the qualifi-cation of an ASTERIX tool, COMSOFThas again broken new ground in thesurveillance sector, being the firstcompany world-wide to demonstratethe required ASTERIX maturity level.

RAPS-II

(Radar Analysis, Playback &Simulation System for SurveillanceData) is a powerful technical moni-toring tool for ATC, supportingASTERIX and many other surveillancedata formats and protocols. Theportable system allows simultaneousrecording and replay of several livesurveillance data streams and com-prises a comprehensive set of features for ASTERIX analysis, user-defined filtering, processing, visuali-zation and test data generation.

It also includes an assortment of ASTERIX validation and qualitymonitoring features, provides anASTERIX editor and an ASTERIX simulator. RAPS-II has many timesproven an indispensable tool forintegration testing, acceptance testing and day-to-day technicalmonitoring. RAPS-II is today theworld's first EUROCONTROL-qualified ASTERIX Reference Product and Test Tool.

COMSOFT Systems & theirASTERIX Functionality

RAPS-II

Your Contact:Manfred SchmidWachhausstr. 5a76227 KarlsruheGermany

Tel.:+49-721-9497-104Fax: +49-721-9497-119Email: info@comsoft.deInternet: www.comsoft.de COMSOFT i-IV

RMCDE & RADNET

The RMCDE (Radar Message Con-version & Distribution Equipment) isa powerful and highly versatile sur-veillance communication front endprocessor based on ASTERIX. It iscapable of connecting on one sideto almost all types of surveillancedata sources and on the other sideto all types of surveillance data processing equipment. A rich set ofconversion functions, the support ofall kinds of communication inter-faces, as well as the networking andfiltering capabilities of the RMCDEmake it the optimal solution for awide range of ATC environments.The system is the cornerstone of the European RADNET (Radar DataDistribution Network) and today represents a de facto standard forsurveillance data exchange.

ADR & RFC

ADR (All-Purpose Data StreamReplicator) and RFC (Radar FallbackCommunication System) representdown-scaled versions of RMCDE interms of functionality and redun-dancy. Both solutions provide outstanding conversion, distributionand filtering capabilities with commercial-off-the-shelf PC hardware.ADR and RFC follow the same opendesign architecture as RMCDE andfind their application, among others,as radar communication front endprocessors for RDP fallback systems.Like RMCDE the systems are nativeASTERIX engines, i.e. all internal processing is done in this format.

R2D2 & RRR

COMSOFT's solution for archiving,retrieval and replay of large amountsof surveillance and audio data. Inaddition to ASTERIX, a multitude ofother radar data formats, likeEurocontrol, CD2 or RDIF are flexiblyrecorded and replayed via a widerange of protocols, e.g. X.25, HDLCLAP-B, HDLC Frame Level, LLC1, TP4 or UDP. In its synchronized version, the R2D2 system supportsaudio and digital interfaces like:ISDN E1/T1, Analogue and ISDN2.The system is highly scalable interms of the number of recording/replay channels, operator workingpositions or storage volumes.

RDD

(Radar Data Display) is COMSOFT'soperational radar data display system, supporting ASTERIX andmany other radar data formats. The system shows an outstandingflexibility, with respect to an easytechnical integration into a largevariety of existing environments, as well as with respect to the largenumber of supported applicationscenarios. Based on its broad scala-bility, ranging from PC-based stand-alone to networked solutions, RDDcan be ideally configured for tower,approach and en-route centers.

RMD

(Radar Monitoring Display) is thereal-time technical monitoring version of the RDD product family.Its field of application includes center-based or on-site surveillanceand radar analysis, as well as system monitoring and supervision.It comprises low level analysis functions, a raw plot display, as well as logging and multi-channelcorrelation features for ASTERIX andfurther radar data formats. Like RDDit can be broadly customized withrespect to supported data formats,system environment and user interface.

RPX

(Radar Data Processing Executive) is COMSOFT's POSIX-compliant soft-ware package for advanced mono-and multi- radar tracking of ASTERIX and other radar data for-mats. It combines modern trackingalgorithms with state-of-the-art soft-ware technology. RPX was designedto be easily adaptable to a widerange of radar properties andparameter settings for operationaluse. This includes an easy and flexible on-site configuration facility.Besides its usage in dedicated RDPsystems, the package is also avail-able as part of COMSOFT's RDD,together establishing a radar dataprocessing and display solution in a single-PC or a LAN configuration.

COMSOFT

RMCDE

R2D2/RRR

RDD/RMD