A Throughput Based Capacity Metric for Low-Altitude Airspace

Abstract

This paper proposes a throughput-based metric for estimating airspace capacity to accommodate future air traffic in low-altitude airspace. It is motivated by the need to assess the impact of future large-scale air traffic demand on communities and existing urban airspace. In this paper, we simulate unmanned traffic in a representative area and measure the variation of traffic flow. We evaluate three conflict detection and resolution algorithms and two minimum separation requirements and present their effects on throughput. We find that, beyond an algorithm-specific aircraft inflow rate, throughput tends to decrease before the system safety reduces, and hence this metric is promising for evaluating airspace capacity. Further, we find that such a metric in conjunction with other capacity metrics may be useful in evaluating the adequacy of a conflict detection and resolution method for large-scale system operations at or close to capacity.