Distributed feedback control for an Eulerian model of the National Airspace System

This paper proposes an Eulerian model of traffic flows in the National Airspace System (NAS) and presents a distributed feedback control approach for managing the flows. The main contribution is the development of a model that reflects the way that air traffic controllers regulate traffic flows into their facilities, and of a feedback control approach that provides them with decision support, in a distributed manner that is consistent with the existing communication structure. The focus is on developing techniques that guarantee that the aircraft queues in each airspace sector, which are an indicator of air traffic controller workload, are kept small. It is shown that the problems of scheduling and routing aircraft flows in the NAS can be posed as the fluid approximation of a network of queues, and that under appropriate conditions, a MaxWeight policy can be used to determine a distributed feedback control law that stabilizes the system. Extensions to the problem of airport arrival/departure management, and to traffic flows that are driven by demand are also described.