Wide area multilateration and ADS-B proves resilient in Afghanistan

Multilateration is a proven technology for air traffic surveillance with hundreds of site installations world-wide. However, most, if not all, installations have been in secure areas with basic, dedicated infrastructure in place. Wide area multilateration (WAM) has not been fully appraised in more challenging areas like Afghanistan where robust power, communications, and security are not available. It is important that Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) understand how external factors like intermittent power impact WAM in order to respond to outages appropriately while operating the system. In this paper, we present the lessons learned from deploying WAM in a war zone backed by performance results from a series of flight tests proving WAM, when properly designed and implemented, is a very adaptable and robust surveillance solution.