Rockwell Collins Touts Multi-Source Aircraft Tracking System

Rockwell Collins announced a new flight tracking service for airlines that will satisfy the 15-minute tracking standard member nations recommended during a recent International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) safety conference. Unveiling the system one year after the still unsolved disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 over the Indian Ocean, the company said it is already working with six airlines to incorporate the service in their operations.

The “Arinc MultiLink” system currently draws from six data sources to follow aircraft: periodic position reports through automatic dependent surveillance-contract (ADS-C), which is primarily satellite-based; regular position reports through automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B), which relies on ground stations receiving signals; the aircraft communications addressing and reporting system (Acars) that airlines use to communicate with their aircraft; radar data the FAA makes available to airlines; position information Eurocontrol makes available; and Rockwell Collins’ own high-frequency data link (HFDL). The company uses a proprietary algorithm to merge and standardize the data, yielding “higher fidelity” position reporting.

By using multiple data sources, the system offers a timelier way of determining when an aircraft has stopped reporting its position, improving on solely transponder-based tracking, the company said. “If an aircraft goes silent, we will know,” said Tim Ryan, Rockwell Collins director of Globalink programs and services management. “If you only have one data feed, and that’s the only thing you’re looking at, it may take you awhile before you realize that the aircraft is not reporting. Just because an aircraft misses one reporting cycle doesn’t necessarily mean that there is something amiss…On looking at multiple different data feeds, and they all go silent, I have a much quicker way of determining that there is a problem potentially with the aircraft or on the flight deck.”

The multiple data feeds also make possible more frequent position reports, achieving the 15-minute reporting standard ICAO member nations recommended at the High Level Safety Conference held in Montreal in early February. “Multiple data feeds can allow me in the aggregate to be able to provide positional data more frequently than any one could by itself,” Ryan said. “If you focus on just one [feed] you may not have enough coverage to satisfy even the 15-minute recommendation by ICAO. With the aggregate of them all together, you certainly do.”

With MultiLink, Rockwell Collins is leveraging its December 2013 acquisition of airborne communications provider Arinc, based in Annapolis, Md., to provide a new service offering. The system’s ground station-based HFDL component originated with Arinc as a high-frequency enhancement of its Acars service. Aircraft equipped with HFDL automatically deliver network performance data which Rockwell Collins will repurpose for the tracking application. “That data has in the past been generated by the aircraft to help us maintain the service. It was stored and post-processed the next day so that we could use it for troubleshooting any problems that our customers were having,” Ryan said. “Now we’re not post-processing it; we’re taking a direct, real-time feed and pulling it into this tracking mechanism.”

Airlines will be able to track their aircraft using either the Rockwell Collins OpsCenter/Web Aircraft Situation Display or Hermes/SkyView display applications.