The Air Traffic Control (ATC) system of which objective is to maintain the safe and efficient flow of air traffic consists of three basic elements, i.e., Man, Machine, and Environment. And the communication in its wide meaning relates these elements to a total system like the nervous system in the body, and is indispensable for the ATC system as the nervous system for man. For example, Radio/Wire-Telephone communications, Teletype networks, Radar system, and Man-Machine communications are included in the communication, that is, the ATC communications.
In recent years, an increase of the ATC communications caused by that of air traffic has become a problem stringently needed to be solved, since it might deteriorate the function of the ATC system in view of the controller's communication workload and the communication channels. Hence, many plannings and installations have been pushed forward to cope with this problem. However, the radio-telephone communications of controllers with pilots, that is, the Air/Ground communications are still oral as in the past, and then get behind in an improvement on its communication system. Therefore, it is highly essential to improve the Air/Ground communications.
Regarding with this problem, the recommendation of the Air/Ground Digital Data Link was presented to the International Civil Aviation Organization, and a feasibility study of an application of the Discrete Address Beacon System to an Air/Ground data transmission has been started in the United States. These systems, which can handle automatically a number of the communications and may considerably reduce the controller's workload, must be introduced into the future ATC system of Japan.
In this context, we have been studying the actual features of the Air/Ground communications as a part of the research on the ATC communications in Japan. In this paper, according to the data collected in the Tokyo Area Control Center, we describe the results of a statistical analysis and a computer simulation based upon the queuing theory, some comments on the controller's communication workload, and to what degree the Air/Ground communications can be handled by Machine in the advanced ATC system.
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