Sector-based Distributed Scheduling Strategy in Air Traffic Flow Management

Air traffic flow scheduling is an important component in air traffic control system and has significant, effects on the safety and efficiency of air transportation. In this paper, we propose a sector-based distributed air traffic flow scheduling strategy to minimize the airport arrival delay. The scheduling problem is formulated based on a simplified air traffic system model consisting of sectors, air-routes, waypoints and airports. A cell transmission flow dynamic model is adopted to describe the system dynamics and some safety-based constranits such as the sequence of en-routed aircraft and tyre limitations of cruising speeds are considered in the system model. To overcome the computational complexity involved in the centralized structure, we propose a sector-based distributed approach based on Lagrangian relaxation. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheduling strategies. (C) 2016, IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control) Hosting by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.