18 QUARTER 4 2018 AIRSPACE

REMOTE TOWER TECHNOLOGY SPECIAL REPORT

Providing safe, cost-effective service to every airport in the world, no matter how remote or how thin the traffic, will be a huge boost to air connectivity and the benefits that connectivity delivers.

Remote towers afford that opportunity. Norway, for example, relies on aviation to feed remote communities, supporting local economies, education, sport, culture and even the health system. More than 30,000 air ambulance journeys are made every year in the country. Indeed, the hospital structure in Northern Norway is largely based on the frequency of air transport.

Aviation’s role in Norwegian tourism is also increasing. The number of tourists flying to Norway increased from 2.4 million to 4.4 million visitors between 2011 and 2016. Air transport is particularly important for the seasonal visits to Northern Norway with tourists keen to enjoy a taste of a traditional Christmas.

To cope with increasing demand in an efficient manner, Avinor – which operates civil aviation infrastructure in the country – is introducing remote tower services for 15 airports in partnership with its suppliers, Kongsberg and Indra. The airports will be operated from a tower centre in Bodø with the first airport – Røst – on schedule to be operational in the autumn of 2019.

By the end of 2021, all 15 airports will be remotely controlled from the tower centre in Bodø.

Sequential stepIn the beginning, the individual airports will be controlled from separate workstations.

“The move to service provision to multiple airports from one workstation requires thorough assessments and validations, which will take time after the initial operations have started,” says Jan Østby, Programme Manager in the Ninox Remote Towers / Avinor Air Navigation Services.

No date has been set for the commencement of multiple operations, but, in any case, there will be an interim step. A sequential mode will be implemented that allows service to be provided to one airport at a time from the same workstation. Østby says this is less complex to achieve.

The move to service provision to multiple airports from one workstation requires thorough assessments and validations, which will take time after the initial operations have started.

Superior service from a distanceRemote and digital towers can be a win-win solution, boosting air connectivity and the benefits of aviation even as they streamline ATM operations and costs.

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REMOTE TOWER TECHNOLOGY SPECIAL REPORT

“Plans for these processes are being developed and the multiple concept is considered an important enabler in our programme,” Østby notes.

The benefits of remote towers to both the operator and the local economies could be significant.

For the Avinor Group, remote towers will save significant maintenance costs on existing structures. Many of the control towers in Norway are due for refurbishment or total replacement. Remote towers will circumvent heavy investment in new tower buildings in the future. “It is still too early pinpoint a specific figure, but we are confident that the return on investment will be positive,” says Østby. “It is a tremendous opportunity to improve efficiency and reduce costs and will enable us to continue providing the excellent air traffic service currently enjoyed in Norway.”

Meanwhile, remote towers will ensure the airports served are accessible throughout the day and night. The centralised service

delivery will cover current opening hours and ensure on-call services to handle ambulance flights and search and rescue missions outside opening hours. The improved flexibility and safety provision will build a platform for business growth in

How do remote towers work?

ATCOs are physically located in a tower centre away from the airport they are controlling. Cameras, microphones and other equipment are installed at the airport to provide detailed information about airport conditions and activities. This information is displayed to the ATCO on large screens that give a full overview of every movement and operation at an airport.

In many ways, remote towers offer superior service. The 360-degree cameras are more sensitive than the human eye, for example, and can zoom in on small details and use infra-red to see in the dark.

Passengers will not notice any difference to normal operations and even for pilots there are no practical differences. They will still talk to the tower personnel on the radio and receive instructions.

Remote towers have several redundant networks using both cable and radio transmissions. If one network should fail, another can be used to connect to the tower centre.

While the rewards are great, there are challenges to be addressed before the full potential of remote towers can be realised. The nature of the remote tower project is such that maintenance takes on even greater importance ... human resource, training, and regulatory issues also have to be tackled.

For pilots, there will be no practicalday-to-day difference – they will continue talking with tower staff

over the radio like today.

From the tower centre in Bodø, the tower service is operated at several airports, using the same

personnel previously located at each airport. With large

screens, they have oversight of everything at the remote

airports, communicating directly with both pilots and

crews on the ground.

Each airport is connected to the tower centre through

two networks which are independent of each other.

If one network breaks down, there is still access to the

tower centre the other way. This network is independent

of the civilian broadband network, consisting of both cables and radio

transmission.

For airline passengers it is not obvious that the tower at the airport is remote controlled, other than there is a camera mast at the airport and those who were

previously in the tower are now in Bodø.

A camera at the airport takes a 360° view of the airfield, with more details than the human eye can perceive. The cameras can zoom in on small details, show motion in pictures (eg. birds), and also have

infrared capability that makes it possible to see in the dark.

The tower centre in Bodø will operate airports

throughout Norway, both

small and large.

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regional communities, especially within such sectors as oil and gas, tourism and trade.

It is also important to note that remote towers can be deployed at airports of any size. “As with other ATM systems, the system must be adapted to the local needs to cover the geographical area of the airport and meet the capacity demand,” Østby advises.

Human resourcesWhile the rewards are great, there are challenges to be addressed before the full potential of remote towers can be realised.

The nature of the remote tower project is such that maintenance takes on even greater importance. This is especially true for Norway with its northern regions experiencing extremely harsh winter conditions.

Avinor will have maintenance teams closely inspecting the various systems, both in the control centre and at the individual airports. The maintenance teams will comprise staff from Avinor, Kongsberg, and Indra.

Østby is confident that Avinor’s long experience in winter operations will prove hugely beneficial when launching the remote tower service. In fact, cameras have been successfully tested at two different locations for more than a year, so their weather resilience is well proven.

The challenges are not just technical, however. Human resource, training, and regulatory issues also have to be tackled.

Introducing remote towers will probably involve moving air traffic controllers (ATCOs) to a new location, perhaps some distance away.

This requires a transparent, comprehensive relocation programme that is acceptable to the organisation and its staff and their families.

The human element of the transformation to remote towers is complicated by the need for new training. Naturally enough, training is crucial to the implementation of any new technology.

Østby says that precise plans for training processes for remote tower services are still being formulated. “Generally, ATCOs are being introduced to a range of new technologies as well as new operational concepts and operational procedures,” he says. “This will require new training plans and the revision of existing plans. Multiple airport training is a very important issue and needs to be defined in detail as we progress with the concept description, safety assessments and human factors assessments.”

Regulatory collaborationClearly, remote towers are required to provide a service which is at least as safe as the present service – and preferably even safer.

Avinor is working closely with the Norwegian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) to ensure regulatory approval keeps pace with the organisation’s remote tower strategy. The NCAA has a dedicated team of experts working with Avinor, which, in turn, has appointed specific individuals to be responsible for the regulatory dialogue.

Avinor performs extensive safety analyses for every modification to systems or methods, in accordance with internal processes approved by the NCAA. Before remote towers are introduced, therefore, their services must be accepted by the NCAA and there must be documentation to demonstrate that they offer a level of safety that is equal to or better than traditional towers.

“We are confident that remote towers offer a safe and sustainable way forward for Norwegian ATM,” concludes Østby.

Remote tower regulation

CANSO’s view is that there is no need for different regulation as remote/digital towers do the same job as traditional towers. Rather, the focus should be on performance.

A CANSO paper on remote tower regulation – Digitisation of Aerodrome Air Traffic Services – presented to the ICAO 13th Air Navigation Conference states that “it is important to apply a performance-based regulatory approach, allowing the technology to develop to support safety and service enhancements that overcome limitations associated with conventional concepts”.

The paper further requests that:

ICAO takes advantage of provisions developed in Europe and elsewhere that support remotely provided aerodrome air traffic services (ATS)

ICAO encourages other States and standard development organisations to collaborate on global provisions for digital ATS

ICAO initiates the development of a common set of guidance material to ensure the availability of high quality and secured digital ATS information in a timely manner

ICAO coordinates the development of guidance material with relevant industry stakeholders.

Remote towers will ensure the airports served are accessible throughout the day and night. The centralised service delivery will cover current opening hours and ensure on-call services to handle ambulance flights and search and rescue missions outside opening hours. The improved flexibility and safety provision will build a platform for business growth in regional communities.

Aviation’s role in Norwegian tourism is increasing.

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REMOTE TOWER TECHNOLOGY SPECIAL REPORT

22 QUARTER 4 2018 AIRSPACE

Remote tower controls will become reality in Germany in late 2018. The tower at Saarbrücken International Airport will soon be unstaffed. Air traffic controllers will handle traffic from the Remote Tower Centre in Leipzig, over 400 kilometres away.

With around 15,300 aircraft movements per year, Saarbrücken will be by far the largest airport in the world to be controlled remotely in regular operations. DFS chose Saarbrücken to start with because of the manageable number of flight movements and because the old tower cab had to be replaced soon, which would have cost many millions of euros. Instead of replacing it, we decided on remote tower control (RTC).

The complete project comprises the airports of Saarbrücken, Erfurt and Dresden. Erfurt, which has a similar number of aircraft movements as Saarbrücken, will be the second airport to be added to the Remote Tower Centre. This will take place approximately one year after Saarbrücken. Dresden has more than twice as many flights as the other two airports – in 2017 there were 36,480 movements – and operates a lot of mixed traffic. It is planned to be the third airport to be remotely operated.

An extension of the project to other single-runway airports may be conceivable in the future. These are some of the smaller airports among the 16 international airports controlled by DFS, which have a similar layout.

A great viewOur system is characterised by the fact that the working position in the Remote Tower Centre has been developed according to the needs of out-of-the-window view. On the other hand, we did not change the operational concept and procedures so our customers will not see any difference at RTC-operated airports.

The RTC controllers will work with the advanced ATS systems, developed by DFS, for situational awareness (radar), flight data processing, weather and information display and others. Completely new is the Frequentis system, which reproduces the out-of-the-window view; instead of looking through the tower window, the controller looks at a panoramic view on five screens. Whereas in the tower the controller turns his head to right or left to get an overview, in the RTC the controller pans the camera with a mouse in the desired direction. The controller can switch the image between normal (full HD) and infrared vision.

The image is reproduced by a 360-degree colour video camera system and a 360-degree infrared camera. The automatic object recognition and tracking in the panorama display is very accurate. The system provides the controllers with additional optical information, which is superior to the conventional look-out of the tower.

In addition, there are two pan-tilt-zoom cameras. The zoom function replaces the previous option of using binoculars. It provides thirty times magnification in colour and twenty-four times magnification in infrared. The entire camera system is heated and equipped with an automatic cleaning system, so the cameras will not fog up, get dirty or iced up.

For data transmission, we use redundant, exclusive data networks that we had already. So we only had to expand the bandwidth.

The benefits of RTCRTC increases efficiency and reduces costs – decisive factors in air traffic management. Our remote tower controllers will be cross-trained and authorised for the three designated airports. Maintenance and repair costs are reduced because the systems are bundled at one location. In this way, we can reduce the number of staff and increase the flexibility and efficiency of shift scheduling.

For the controllers, the job will become more attractive, digital and modern. And it offers greater variety than is the case today at similar medium-sized single-runway locations. Of course, there are challenges. One was to find a system for the out-of-the-window view that met our requirements in terms of performance, flexibility, quality and safety.

The main challenge, however, was a new working environment. Even though the feasibility of the RTC project had already been demonstrated in 2012, we still had to deal with the change process. Remote technology is a paradigm shift in ATC. It is the first step into the digital future.

Klaus-Dieter Scheurle, CEO, DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung, explains how and why DFS chose to implement digital tower technology.

RTC in Germany: first international airport to be operational soon

Saarbrücken traffic will be handled by controllers in Leipzig.

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DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung Remote Tower Control schematic.

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Tower services from afarDoes every airport still need a control tower? What was once taken as a given will be different in the future. Air navigation service providers around the world are increasingly backing the remote tower control (RTC) concept. With RTC, air traffic controllers handle traffic at the airport not from a tower on site but from a distant control centre. DFS and the Austrian high-tech company Frequentis have together developed a particularly advanced solution. The view from the tower cab is replaced by one delivered from a camera tower equipped with both static and pan-tilt-zoom video and infrared cameras. The system supports air traffic controllers in doing their work by automatically detecting and tracking aircraft and other targets. The system has already been put through numerous live operations tests at Saarbrücken Airport over a four-month period in 2018.

The future with Remote Tower ControlRemote tower control for Saarbrücken Airport is just the start. Step by step the airports of Erfurt and Dresden will be equipped with camera systems and will be integrated into the Remote Tower Centre in Leipzig. DFS will then control three airports in Germany from one location.

Transmission of images

Control of cameras

The Remote Tower CentreThe air traffic controllers who will handle traffic at Saarbrücken Airport will sit in the Remote Tower Centre in Leipzig, more than 400 kilometres away to the east.

360-degree infrared camera

Pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) infrared camera

360-degree video camera

Pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) video camera

Camera tower

Cleared for take-off

Cleared for take-off

RTC

RTC

RTC

RTC

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RTC-Centre

SAARBRÜCKEN

REMOTE TOWER TECHNOLOGY SPECIAL REPORT