A6 Position on ADS-C Common Services standardisation

The A6 Alliance has published position on ADS-C Common Services standardisation

  • Standardisation for ADS-C1 Common Services (ACS) is needed in a streamlined and efficient manner to secure timely operational implementation of initial trajectory management functionality of the CP1 IR2;
  • The A6 Alliance strongly supports that the necessary ADS-C Common Services’ standards should be developed by EUROCAE3, given their interrelation with pre-existing EUROCAE standards. Hence, the A6 urges EUROCAE to set up an appropriate Working Group (WG), in strong coordination with WG-78 and WG-104, in order to kickstart the standard-making process at the start of Q2 2022;
  • Consequently, the A6 Alliance calls fora joint standardisation proposal to be developed by the SJU4, SDM5 and the PJ38 stakeholders towards the European ATM Standards Coordination Group (EASCG). Such proposal must identify the required new EUROCAE standards (EDs) and associated timelines for ACS for inclusion in the EASCG’s Rolling Development Plan (RDP).

Background – ADS-C Common Services (ACS) under S2020 PJ38

The definition and practical demonstration of the ADS-C Common Service concept is currently executed in the SESAR6 context, where it is driven by PJ38 ADSCENSIO Very Large-Scale Demonstration in work package 5. In this project, a strong group of ATM stakeholder, including nine members of the A6 Alliance, have in 2021 drafted and already agreed a specification and SWIM7 service description for an ADS-C Common Service.

In cooperation with participating industry partners, software development is now ongoing according to these specifications, targeting to deliver high-quality system demonstrators by the end of 2021. Developments will include both service-side and client-side systems, which will be trialled in the real world with airline revenue flights from 6 cooperating airlines during 2022.

The data provided by ADS-C Common Service in this project will be directly used to feed more than 10 different operational validation exercises by European partners, including many ANSP8s. Building on the strong results from the ADS-C demonstration already conducted in the predecessor project PJ31 DIGITS, the PJ38 group is confident to deliver high quality demonstrators reaching up to V4 maturity and TRL96-TRL7 level, as well as specification material ready to support the subsequent standardization and industrialization steps.