Throughput / Complexity Tradeoffs for Routing Traffic in the Presence of Dynamic Weather

We present efficient algorithms for finding trajectories for routing multiple aircraft avoiding a set of static or dynamic obstacles (e.g., hazardous weather cells). We present results of an implementation of our algorithms, comparing the throughput and traffic complexity across three routing paradigms: Static airlanes: A set of lanes for air traffic is established. The aircraft move in trail along each lane, altogether forming a highly coherent traffic pattern. The drawback is that the lanes, being static, do not stay clear of hazardous weather as the weather cells move and block the airlane. FreeFlight: Each aircraft determines its own trajectory in space-time, avoiding moving weather cells and other aircraft. This strategy can result in highly complex traffic patterns that are not amenable to human controller oversight. Flexible Flow Corridors: This model combines the advantages of the static airlanes and the FreeFlight solution. The aircraft are routed along a set of lanes that slowly change as the weather cells move. This results in a correlated traffic flow amidst moving weather. Our routing algorithms are guided by a hexagonal packing of disks in free space, and a uniform discretization of time. The discretization allows us to take into account additional requirements relevant for Air Traffic Management (ATM).

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