Esterel Technologies>News & Events>Success Stories>Korea Aerospace University

Korea Aerospace University Develops an Educational Airborne Collision Avoidance System using SCADE

Korea Aerospace University (KAU), an 54-year-old institution, plays an important role in Korea's highly developed aerospace industry and has likewise been instrumental in helping Korea become the 6th ranked nation in world air transportation. The primary goal of KAU is to invest into the hi-tech aeronautic engineering fields such as airplane design and manufacturing and aeronautical structures as well as the aerospace-related fields such as flight operation, air control, airplane maintenance, airport management, air transportation and logistics, aviation law, management and English.

Aircraft collisions are the third leading cause of aircraft accidents. The ACAS plays a key role in the safety of air navigation systems. The ACAS must be independent of ground-based systems like air traffic control. And, the ACAS must be certified under DO-178B or comparable regional certifications. ACAS improves safety in the airspace by a factor between 3 and 5.

KAU developed an airborne avoidance collision system (ACAS) as a means of training its students using SCADE. KAU first developed a model that included 8 important stages of aircraft avoidance: surveillance, tracking, traffic advisory, threat detection, range and altitude test, horizontal filtering and resolution advisory. This model was implemented as a high-level flow chart in SCADE Suite. The flow chart contained a deterministic and hierarchical data-flow model with inputs such as longitude, latitude and altitude as well as the aircraft track. Information in the intruding aircraft was also input. Outputs included traffic advisory and resolution advisory. Design in SCADE resulted in eight modules based on the stages of aircraft avoidance mentioned previously. These modules became part of a flight display system created with SCADE Display.

With the ACAS Simulator developed using SCADE Suite and SCADE Display, KAU students can test and check any type of case that they wish. KAU uses the SCADE models and display to research More Safe Logic (MSL) and as a basis for a real-target ACAS. Work on the ACAS simulator continues. KAU hopes to use this system as a basis for real-target ACAS software development.