Time shifting beacon radar reports in recorded air traffic data

The Federal Aviation Administrationpsilas National Airspace System is a network of air navigation facilities, air traffic control facilities, and airports, along with the technologies and the rules and regulations to operate the system. One of these technologies is a conflict probe, which is used by air traffic controllers to predict aircraft-to-aircraft and aircraft-to-airspace conflicts. To be effective the conflict probe must predict potential conflicts accurately. Although functional testing can be performed to evaluate a conflict probe, it is essential that the probe also be tested using scenarios that preserve the real-world errors that affect the probepsilas accuracy. This requires that test scenarios be developed that are based on recorded air traffic data. However, recorded air traffic data generally does not contain actual conflicts. This requires that the flights be shifted in time so that aircraft-to-aircraft conflicts are created in the test scenarios. This paper describes a technique in which recorded beacon radar reports can be time shifted in order to create aircraft-to-aircraft conflicts for conflict probe testing.