NextGen CNS TEST BED Solutions to Advance the National Airspace System

The need for information sharing is critical in Air Traffic Management (ATM) and necessary for collaborative decision making. Sensis' network-enabled infrastructure, installed at the NextGen CNS Test Bed, employs the FAA's System Wide Information Management (SWIM) framework for supporting secure information sharing for Airport, Airline, Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs), as well as for terminal operations. The network-enabled infrastructure supports the increasing demand for surveillance, aeronautical, weather and flight information, while creating a secure environment for collaborative decision making among all stakeholders.

Past approaches to satisfying this demand include replication of the information, and routing it to each consumer on a dedicated point-to-point circuit. The process associated with each request was costly and time-consuming. An obvious problem with this approach was the aggregated cost of duplicating information on these point-to-point circuits, in addition to the increasing operations and maintenance of the service. Additionally, this approach isolated the circuits, which prevented collaboration.

To improving accessibility and collaboration through a secure open-standard, flexible and scalable framework, Sensis' network-enabled infrastructure provides standards-based messaging, mediation, and security services. These services enable registration, discovery, publication and subscription of information via Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) and allow for information path separation for specified sensitive areas.