Common ARTS

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Common ARTS is an air traffic control automation system currently being used in most of the TRACONs around the United States. CommonARTS is the modern implementation of Automated Radar Terminal System (ARTS) that was in widespread use around the nation. Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System (STARS) was designed to replace CommonARTS at all the US TRACONS, however that project has been stalled, and the new FAA project is TAMR.

[edit] RADAR Automation

A typical short range RADAR used in Air traffic control will scan the area about 60 miles every 4-6 seconds. The primary signal returned will contain a range and azmuth of a target. Automation will correlate these targets scan to scan and make estimates of speed and direction. A secondary signal may be available, containing the aircraft transponder code, and possibly altitude (and possibly other information Mode S). The automation will correlate the primary and secondary signals.

Once the automation systems know the details of the aircraft it is tracking, this information is available on the display, as part of the datablock near the aircraft representation. The information will typically show an aircraft ID, if the transponder code is associated with a known flight plan, the altitude, and speed.

Other systems can use the speed and direction information. The safety systems need to use this information. The conflict alert (CA) system will compare the direction, altitude and speed of multiple aircraft to see if there are any possibilities of aircraft being too close together.

[edit] History

ARTS was developed in the late 1960s by Univac corporation to help automate the TRACONS operations in the United States. At many TRACONS, a Unisys mainframe computer was installed to handle the processing. In the early 1970s virtually all TRACONS in the US were running ARTS software to help track aircraft displayed on the radar console. The Bouroughs corporation was also working on RADAR display consoles in the 1970s to 1980s.

In the 1980s Univac and Bouroughs Corporations merged creating Unisys.

By the early 1980s an effort was proposed to port the ARTS functionality to microprocessors. Unisys began this program, and the name changed to CommonARTS. The CommonARTS processes were running on Motorola 68000 microprocessors. The software was mostly rewritten in the C language, running on various real-time operating systems.

In the 1990s Unisys split out some of the Defense work, and Lockheed-Martin acquired the airtraffic management unit.

In the 1990s, most of the CommonARTS software was ported to PowerPC processors, still using the same source code, but with larger memory footprint, allowing control of more aircraft. By 1997, there were 131 small to medium TRACONS and 5 large TRACONS running CommonARTS software. The PowerPC also allowed the display software to drive ARTS Color Displays (ACD) replacing the vector based Full Digital ARTs Displays (FDAD).

The STARS program was started to replace the CommonARTS systems at all TRACONS in the late 1990s.

In the late 1990s Automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ASD-B) support was added to Common ARTS software to augment RADAR sensors. Multiple sensor inputs were added including long range (ARSR) allowing larger TRACONS to have variable size and shape sectors, since they no longer needed to have round coverage areas matching a single sensor scan area.

With the bidding for Enroute Modernization project (ERAM), Raytheon and Lockheed joined teams to finish the STARS program together, mixing CommonARTS and STARS hardware and software.