Oceanic Situational Awareness Over the Gulf of Mexico

Air traffic control (ATC) mandated, aircraft separations over the oceans impose a limitation on traffic capacity for a given corridor, given the projected traffic growth over the Gulf of Mexico. The separations result from a lack of acceptable situational awareness over oceans where radar position updates are not available. This study considers the use of Automatic Dependent Surveillance (ADS) data transmitted over a commercial satellite communications system as an approach to provide ATC with the needed situational awareness and thusly allow for reduced aircraft separations. This study uses Federal Aviation Administration data from a single day for the Gulf of Mexico to analyze traffic loading to be used as a benchmark against which to compare several approaches for coordinating data transmissions from the aircraft to the satellites.