The

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

National Airspace System Voice Switch (NVS) project, a part of the

Next Generation Air Transportation System The Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) is the current U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) program to modernize the National Airspace System (NAS). The FAA began work on NextGen improvements in 2007 and plans to finish imp ...

(NextGen), aims to establish a single set of scalable voice switches that can support a dynamic flow of air traffic. Voice communications network flexibility is essential for the

Federal Aviation Administration The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is a Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government agency within the United States Department of Transportation, U.S. Department of Transportation that regulates civil aviation in t ...

(FAA) to increase air traffic control network flexibility.

Description

Voice communications is a fundamental part of providing air traffic control services. Both air-to-ground and ground-to-ground voice communications are essential for the en route, flight service and

terminal Terminal may refer to: Computing Hardware * Computer terminal, a set of primary input and output devices for a computer * Terminal (electronics), a device for joining electrical circuits together ** Battery terminal, electrical contact used to ...

domains of aircraft flights to provide safe, orderly and efficient flow of air traffic. In the early years of the twenty-first century,

air traffic control Air traffic control (ATC) is a service provided by ground-based air traffic controllers who direct aircraft on the ground and through a given section of controlled airspace, and can provide advisory services to aircraft in non-controlled air ...

air-ground and ground-ground voice communications are managed on a

geographical Geography (from Ancient Greek ; combining 'Earth' and 'write', literally 'Earth writing') is the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding o ...

basis. The equipment used is a mixture of seventeen different types, some already 20 years old. Current voice communications switches are very static, and the ability to adjust the

airspace Airspace is the portion of the atmosphere controlled by a country above its territory, including its territorial waters or, more generally, any specific three-dimensional portion of the atmosphere. It is not the same as outer space which is t ...

for varying loads very limited. An air traffic controller in

Miami Miami is a East Coast of the United States, coastal city in the U.S. state of Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade County in South Florida. It is the core of the Miami metropolitan area, which, with a populat ...

in winter time may be over-loaded, whilst in the remainder of the year under-loaded. During the same periods, an air traffic controller in

Minneapolis Minneapolis is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States, and its county seat. With a population of 429,954 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the state's List of cities in Minnesota, most populous city. Locat ...

may be under-loaded in winter, and over-loaded at other times. With an inflexible system, the solution has to be to physically move controllers to cope with the higher workloads. NVS aims to enable voice switch flexibility by allowing the

to be dynamically reconfigured according to workload, without the physical movement of staff. So, an air traffic controller in Minneapolis could be logically reassigned to Miami without a physical movement being necessary. A migration from

analog Analog or analogue may refer to: Computing and electronics * Analog signal, in which information is encoded in a continuous variable ** Analog device, an apparatus that operates on analog signals *** Analog electronics, circuits which use analog ...

communications to

Voice over Internet Protocol Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also known as IP telephony, is a set of technologies used primarily for voice communication sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. VoIP enables Voice call, voice calls to be tran ...

(VOIP) is also being considered.

Benefits

NVS will enable FAA air traffic control to establish a network-based communications system, to evolve towards flexible communications routing that provides dynamic re-sectorisation, resource reallocation, airspace redesign, and improved aircraft flow capacity. NVS will: * use open systems standards and/or

commercial off-the-shelf Commercial-off-the-shelf or commercially available off-the-shelf (COTS) products are packaged or canned (ready-made) hardware or software, which are adapted aftermarket to the needs of the purchasing organization, rather than the commissioning of ...

equipment * reduce equipment

inventories Inventory (British English) or stock (American English) is a quantity of the goods and materials that a business holds for the ultimate goal of resale, production or utilisation. Inventory management is a discipline primarily about specifying ...

of out-of-date switch types * reduce acquisition, training and maintenance costs by reducing the number of voice switch designs * improve equipment availability * enable flexible allocation of access to communications resources to meet both strategic and tactical demands * enable flexible user access profile definitions to assure secure access to the system and to enable defined roles to be performed * provide

scalability Scalability is the property of a system to handle a growing amount of work. One definition for software systems specifies that this may be done by adding resources to the system. In an economic context, a scalable business model implies that ...

* provide a

fault-tolerant system Fault tolerance is the ability of a system to maintain proper operation despite failures or faults in one or more of its components. This capability is essential for high-availability, mission-critical, or even life-critical systems. Fault to ...

Development

Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman Corporation is an American multinational Aerospace manufacturer, aerospace and Arms industry, defense company. With 97,000 employees and an annual revenue in excess of $40 billion, it is one of the world's largest Arms industry ...

Corporation announced the demonstration of the company's Next Generation Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) Voice Switch to officials of the FAA in preparation for the upcoming National Airspace System Voice Switch program competition. The demonstration was the second phase of Northrop Grumman's response to a Request for Information issued by the FAA for the NVS program. all Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20091116-904357.html/ref>

References

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External links

Northrop Grumman NAS Voice Switch
Federal Aviation Administration Voice over IP