Project Profiles

The Test Bed offers the relatively unique opportunity to assess, compare, and analyze the performance of leading edge as well as traditional aviation surveillance technologies individually or in integrated combinations. These evaluations can be performed in the context of the airport surface, the surface plus the airspace surrounding the airport, and/or in a 200 mile regional "wide area" perspective. All three airports are outfitted with the latest multilateration (MLAT) and Automatic Dependant Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) technology.

The Airport Surveillance Radar (ASR-9) at Cleveland Hopkins Airport and the Brecksville Ohio Long Range Radar facility will be integrated into the wide area surveillance solution. The ASR-9 and the Brecksville radar utilize the single surveillance "feed" from a combined MLAT/ADS-B sensor and process it along with information from aircraft flight plans to provide a fused, tagged single track for each aircraft on displays.  This creates not only displays like those used by controllers today, but more advanced displays that are currently under development. The Test Bed's surveillance infrastructure can be applied to investigate system reliability, means for ensuring redundancy, methods for transparent failover and "required surveillance performance" to enable advanced NextGen solutions for safely increasing airport and metroplex airspace capacity.