[Poster] Improving light aviation safety through traffic sharing and OpenSky ADS-B feed

Abstract

Traffic detection and alerting is lacking in light and ultralight aviation aircrafts for several reasons:

• those aircrafts mostly operate in lower airspace, often near the ground, and may not be detected by ATC radar network.
• they may either not be transponder-equipped or not operating their transponder, especially in uncontrolled lower airspace.
• Most of those small aircrafts are not equipped with onboard ADS-B receivers.
• Pilots may not be in touch with ATC information frequencies and hence will not get traffic alerts from ATC.

To increase safety of such flights, we have added the display of surrounding traffic to the Airmate EFB (Electronic Flight Bag) and relevant informational collision avoidance alerts when a potential conflict is detected. Airmate is the most used free application for flight planning and navigation, with a community of more than 230,000 pilots worldwide. The Airmate EFB is now able to display neighbouring traffic consolidated from OpenSky and other hubs, and broadcasted to flying pilots over mobile network connectivity.

The sharing of position reports from Airmate app enables to complement ADS-B traffic with actual data from aircrafts that may not be detected by ATC radar network.

Traffic sharing and alerting prerequisites is to be within coverage of a mobile network and running the Airmate app while flying. An Airmate server is receiving ADS-B traffic from OpenSky and other hubs, FLARM and GliderNet traffic, merging it with Airmate position reports received from Airmate apps in flight mode. The consolidated data is then broadcasted to pilots flying using Airmate EFB if within mobile network coverage.