Newly developed CASSIDIAN radar provides unprecedented capabilities for air traffic control

• New tech­nol­o­gy helps to avoid collisions
• Safe flight con­trol even in the vicin­i­ty of wind turbines

Cassidian’s new ASR-NG allows for safe guid­ance of air­craft even in the vicin­i­ty of wind turbines.

7 March 2012 – Cas­sid­i­an, the defence and secu­ri­ty divi­sion of EADS, brings a new radar onto the mar­ket which offers com­plete­ly new options for air traf­fic con­trol and for safe guid­ance of air­craft dur­ing take-off and land­ing. This sys­tem, called “ASR-NG” (Air­port Sur­veil­lance Radar, Next Gen­er­a­tion), is at the cen­tre of Cassidian’s prod­uct pre­sen­ta­tion at the ATC Glob­al exhi­bi­tion in Amsterdam. 

“Air traf­fic has become so dense that air traf­fic con­trol can no longer man­age with­out the most mod­ern radars and auto­mat­ic iden­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tems,” explains Elmar Com­pans, Head of the Sen­sors & Elec­tron­ic War­fare unit at Cas­sid­i­an. “In this con­text, our new radar will make an impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion to avoid­ing col­li­sions and to effi­cient use of the air space.” 

The ASR-NG con­sists of a pri­ma­ry radar for wide-area sur­veil­lance of the air­fields’ sur­round­ings as well as a sec­ondary radar for auto­mat­ic iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the indi­vid­ual air­craft. Its extreme sen­si­tiv­i­ty means that even very small objects such as ultra-light­weight air­craft, slow fly­ing objects such as heli­copters or even flocks of birds can be reli­ably detect­ed and clas­si­fied. Espe­cial­ly devel­oped algo­rithms allow for safe guid­ance of air­craft even in the vicin­i­ty of wind tur­bines, which is hard­ly pos­si­ble with con­ven­tion­al systems. 

The MSSR 2000 I (Monopulse Sec­ondary Sur­veil­lance Radar) works in accor­dance with the lat­est air traf­fic con­trol stan­dard “Mode S Enhanced Sur­veil­lance” and addi­tion­al­ly deliv­ers ADS‑B data, which great­ly improves the inter­ro­ga­tion process for air­craft iden­ti­fi­ca­tion as well as flight plan allo­ca­tions. It has been type cer­ti­fied (NfL II 66/09) by the Ger­man air traf­fic con­trol organ­i­sa­tion DFS (Deutsche Flugsicherung) and cer­ti­fied (pur­suant to EC 262/2009) by the Euro­pean ATC organ­i­sa­tion EUROCONTROL, which means that there is no need for oper­a­tors to car­ry out their own val­i­da­tion procedures. 

Cas­sid­i­an has already made a name for itself by sup­ply­ing air traf­fic con­trol and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tems in the mil­i­tary and civil­ian sec­tor. For exam­ple, Cas­sid­i­an equips the Ger­man Armed Forces’ air­ports with the ASR‑S air­port sur­veil­lance radar and deliv­ers a com­plete approach con­trol sys­tem for the mil­i­tary air­fields in Switzer­land. In addi­tion, the MSSR 2000 I sec­ondary radar 

is deployed on Ger­man Navy ves­sels and by the naval forces of France, Nor­way and Fin­land for mil­i­tary friend-or-foe iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. For civ­il air traf­fic con­trol, Cassidian’s iden­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tems are used in coun­tries such as Ger­many, USA, Aus­tria, Por­tu­gal, Bul­gar­ia and the Philippines. 

About CASSIDIAN (www.cassidian.com)

Cas­sid­i­an, an EADS com­pa­ny, is a world­wide leader in glob­al secu­ri­ty solu­tions and sys­tems, pro­vid­ing Lead Sys­tems Inte­gra­tion and val­ue- added prod­ucts and ser­vices to civ­il and mil­i­tary cus­tomers around the globe: air sys­tems (air­craft and unmanned aer­i­al sys­tems), land, naval and joint sys­tems, intel­li­gence and sur­veil­lance, cyber secu­ri­ty, secure com­mu­ni­ca­tions, test sys­tems, mis­siles, ser­vices and sup­port solu­tions. In 2010, Cas­sid­i­an – with around 28,000 employ­ees – achieved rev­enues of € 5.9 bil­lion. EADS is a glob­al leader in aero­space, defence and relat­ed ser­vices. In 2010, the Group – com­pris­ing the Divi­sions Air­bus, Astri­um, Cas­sid­i­an and Euro­copter – gen­er­at­ed rev­enues of € 45.8 bil­lion and employed a work­force of more than 121,000.

CASSIDIAN – Defend­ing World Security 

Con­tact:
Lothar Belz
Tel.: 0049 (0) 731 392 3681
lothar.belz@cassidian.com