Airports

Cooperative and Non-Cooperative UAS Traffic Volumes

Bulusu, Vishwanath
Raja Sengupta
Polishchuk, Valentin
Sedov, Leonid
2017

We describe an analytical process to determine how much UAS traffic is feasible. The process is a simulator and data processing tools. The two are applied to the US San Francisco Bay Area and Norrkoping, Sweden. The amount of UAS traffic is measured in flights per day and simulated up to 200,000 flights. A UAS traffic volume is feasible if specified metrics meet operational requirements with high probability and are stable, in the sense of being below thresholds observed for monotone properties in random geometric graphs. We focus on conflict cluster size and argue for it as a fundamental...

An Energy-Based Optimal Control Problem for Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Planning

Liu, Zhilong
Kurzhanskiy, Alex
Raja Sengupta
2017

In this paper, we formulate the flight planning problem for a multirotor Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) as an optimal control problem. The cost optimized is the energy consumption at the cruise phase of a mission. We first present a general formulation, then address a special cases: optimizing flight directions given vehicle speed. The problem was solved numerically on digital elevation models (DEM) with the Ordered Upwind Method (OUM). By combining the optimized path with timestamps, we can generate 4D trajectories typically used in aviation flight planning, and thus maximize the...

Urban Air Mobility: Viability of Hub-Door and Door-Door Movement by Air

Bulusu, Vishwanath
Raja Sengupta
2020

Owing to a century of innovation in connected and automated aircraft design, for the rst time in history, air transport presents a potential competitive alternative to road, for hub-to-door and door-to-door urban services. In this article, we study the viability of air transport, for moving people and goods in an urban area, based on three metrics - enroute travel time, fuel cost and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. We estimate the metrics from emission standards and operational assumptions on vehicles based on current market data and compare electric air travel to gasoline road travel. For...

SimUAM: A Toolchain to Integrate Ground and Air to Evaluate Urban Air Mobility's Impact on Travel Behavior

Yedavalli, Pavan S.
Onat, Emin Burak
Peng, Xin
Raja Sengupta
Waddell, Paul
Bulusu, Vishwanath
Vishwanath, Min
2022

Over the past several years, Urban Air Mobility (UAM) has galvanized enthusiasm from investors and researchers, marrying expertise in aircraft design, transportation, logistics, artificial intelligence, battery chemistry, and broader policymaking. However, two significant questions remain unexplored: (1) What is the value of UAM in a region’s transportation network? and (2) How can UAM be effectively deployed to realize and maximize this value to all stakeholders, including riders and local economies? To adequately understand the value proposition of UAM for metropolitan areas, the authors...

Evaluating eVTOL Network Performance and Fleet Dynamics through Simulation-Based Analysis

Onat, Emin Burak
Bulusu, Vishwanath
Chakrabarty, Anjan
Mark Hansen
Raja Sengupta
Sridhar, Banavar
2024

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) represents a promising solution for future transportation. In this study, we introduce VertiSim, an advanced event-driven simulator developed to evaluate e-VTOL transportation networks. Uniquely, VertiSim simultaneously models passenger, aircraft, and energy flows, reflecting the interrelated complexities of UAM systems. We utilized VertiSim to assess 19 operational scenarios serving a daily demand for 2,834 passengers with varying fleet sizes and vertiport distances. The study aims to support stakeholders in making informed decisions about fleet size, network...

Urban Air Mobility Research Challenges and Opportunities

Raja Sengupta
Bulusu, Vishwanath
Mballo, Chams Eddine
Onat, Emin Burak
Cao, Shangqing (Albert)
2025

This article reviews the literature on urban air mobility (UAM), examining both the research challenges it presents and the transformative opportunities that make these challenges worth addressing. While UAM has historical precedents, the current iteration is born of novel aircraft technology, primarily electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) and electric short takeoff and landing (eSTOL) aircraft. These advances raise new questions in aerodynamics, control, and integration with urban infrastructure. We explore several key research areas, including aircraft design, vertiport...

Economic Benefits of Increased En Route Sector Capacity from Controller-Pilot Data Link Communications

Bennett, Michael J.
Knorr, Dave
Jasenka Rakas
2004

The En Route Controller-Pilot Data Link Communications (CPDLC) program is designed to enable digital data communications between controllers and pilots. CPDLC Build 1A has been proposed as the first step in the nationwide rollout of this program to en route airspace by implementation in eight air route traffic control centers. Because CPDLC will automate several routine air-ground communications tasks, one potential benefit is reduced controller workload, which could lead to increased sector capacity and thus reduced flight times for flights traversing busy sectors. To quantify the...

User Request Evaluation Tool and Controller–Pilot Data Link Communications: Integration Benefits Assessment

Jasenka Rakas
Mark Hansen
Jirajaruporn, Wanjira
Bolic, Tatjana
2003

Explored are the benefits of integrating User Request Evaluation Tool (URET) and Controller-Pilot Data Link Communications (CPDLC). Controller-pilot voice-communication messages and aircraft traffic flows and conflicts are analyzed in great detail in one representative, URET-operating en route sector. On the basis of the mapped URET data and the real-world communication messages, a base case and two alternative scenarios were analyzed to estimate the number of clearances that are given to pilots to resolve aircraft conflicts a sufficient time before the start of the conflict, and to...

Statistical Modeling and Analysis of Landing Time Intervals: Case Study of Los Angeles International Airport, California

Jasenka Rakas
Yin, Huifang
2005

Existing literature suggests that analyses of landing time intervals employ simple statistical models based on time-separation histograms, usually approximated by normal distributions. Although the literature focuses on important issues such as safety, capacity improvements, and separation rules, it does not take into account another important issue: the possible, unique behavior of airlines, pilots, and controllers. In this study such possible, unique behavior is taken into account and a statistical analysis on landing time intervals is performed to find the operational properties of Los...

Deterministic Models for Degraded Airside Capacity and Delays

Jasenka Rakas
Schonfeld, Paul
2004

This paper presents deterministic models for estimating airspace and airport capacity and delays during equipment outages. The National Airspace System (NAS) is very complex and consists of almost 48,000 reportable facilities and services that support air traffic control with very diverse functions and technologies. To better understand NAS performance and develop a methodology for estimating degraded capacity, previous studies about equipment outages and about airspace and airport performance are first reviewed. A deterministic aircraft separation model is used to estimate degraded...