Simulation Environment

Staying on the cutting edge of technology has allowed Metron Aviation to develop a comprehensive simulation environment designed to rapidly evaluate, prototype, test and refine concepts and systems under a variety of conditions and procedures. Metron Aviation maintains an excellence in simulation theory and practice that has been applied to simulation exercises in support of FAA, Airlines, U.S. Navy, and DARPA. In the area of aviation simulation, modeling and simulation has become a vital link in the TFM process and forms the engine behind interactive what-if capabilities as well as plan development. Metron Aviation’s simulation environment is data oriented, time step driven, remotely accessible, and provides a revolutionary platform for Human-in-the-Loop exercises and real-time training based scenarios.

The participants of the Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) community, a joint government/industry initiative, have worked together to foster concepts to enhance the safety and efficiency of the National Airspace System. A major hurdle for the CDM community has been the lack of a capability to effectively test new technologies and procedures prior to deployment.

In an effort to overcome this hurdle, Metron Aviation developed the Jupiter Simulation Environment (JSE). JSE allows CDM stakeholders and community members the ability to test new concepts, algorithms, procedures, and tools prior to release. As an Enhanced Traffic Management System emulator and a simulation engine, JSE is used as a test platform during Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) exercises. CDM participants can connect to JSE using their current suite of tools and run collaborative war games. JSE provides an unprecedented level of visibility into CDM concept development for both users and the FAA.

Jupiter Simulation Environment

To date, JSE has been used for multiple HITL exercises involving many major airlines, the FAA, and research organizations. Slot Credit Substitution (SCS) is a concept that was designed and tested over an abbreviated timeline because JSE was used to develop procedural integrity. In addition, many FAA and airline personnel have been trained on FSM using JSE to emulate connectivity to ETMS. JSE has also been used to test ADL parsing capabilities for other tools developed by Metron Aviation.

JSE was initially deployed in April of 2002. Since then seven additional releases have been deployed with increasing levels of functionality. The latest JSE release includes en route flight processing, which will allow JSE to be used for additional CDM concept development such as collaborative routing.

Additional simulation and evaluation efforts have been performed using Metron Aviation's Surface Management System (SMS). At NASA Ames’ Future Flight Central tower cab simulator (FFC) operational ATC Specialists used SMS to conduct real-time, controller-in-the-loop simulations to support airport surface traffic management. A series of field trials were conducted at the Memphis airport in the ATC Tower Conference Room, FedEx Ramp Tower and Northwest Airlines’ ground operations bunker in October 2002, January 2003, and January 2004. An Operational Trial was conducted in September 2003 where Shadow-TMC used SMS and passed information to the on-position TMC in the ATC Tower, TRACON and ARTCC. Feedback from these events shows that SMS enhances situational awareness and provides efficiency improvements.