Fast and robust detection of runway incursions using localized sensors

Abstract

For over a decade avoiding runway incursions (RI), events where two or more vehicles create a conflicting situation by using the same runway, have been a top ten priority of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). Only the recent technological response in form of area wide deployment of Runway Incursion Prevention and Alerting Systems (RIPAS) improved the situation in the USA and safety seems to have increased significantly. Particularly the Runway Status Lights (RWLS) and the Final Approach Runway Occupancy Signal (FAROS) show a statistically measurable impact. However, in some of the most dangerous RI scenarios the surveillance providing the input for the automatic control of the signals reaches its limitations. The necessary surveillance accuracy needed to deal with such scenarios could be achieved by localized sensors. Therefore this work provides a comparative analysis of surveillance performance in a very dangerous RI scenario based on the experimental RIPAS design XL-RIAS.