Prediction of noise exposure levels using simulated flight trajectories

Noise models, especially aircraft noise models, are needed for the prediction of noise levels where noise measurements are not feasible or possible. In most cases it is prohibitively expensive for airports to measure aircraft noise in their wider surroundings. Thus, as the number of noise measurement stations is limited, it is not possible to generate detailed contours of the noise exposure levels by using real measurements. For this reason analytical noise models are commonly used to compute noise exposure contours for the vicinity of airports on the basis of recorded radar data sets or simulated flight trajectories. This paper discusses different aircraft noise calculation models and analyses their advantages and disadvantages.