Sector Capacity Evaluation And Complexity Analysis

The foundation for objective measurement of airspace availability can be linked to sector capacity estimation based on air traffic controller(ATCO)workload.Therefore,in order to improve the utilization of airspace as an important resource,there is a strong need to study the effects of sector complexities on sector capacity.This paper presents a common method for sector capacity estimation using differential routes and differential busy levels.Best fit analysis on the capacity value distributions of 37 area control sectors and 30 approach control sectors in China have been done,and sector complexcity indicators of both area control sectors and approach control sectors are drawn.Cluster analyses for these indicators are done using different defined ranging methods.Multivariate data analyses are used to find the relationship between sector capacity values and complexity indicators for both types of sectors.The main conclusions are outlined below:(1)Concerning the static and dynamic complexities of sectors,one common sector capacity estimation method based on ATCO workload using differential routes and differential busy levels are proposed.The commonality of this new method lies in two points.First,the addressed new ATCO workload model can be applied for not only area control sectors,but also approach control sectors,and second,the workload model can use simulated data or real operational data as input which means that workload data from simulation environment can be used for planning sectors while workload data from real operation environment can be used for present sectors.(2)Nonparametric estimation is used to calculate the best fit window width for the distribution of sector capacity values.Under the best fit window width,the kernel desity estimation of four different kernel functions,i.e.Gaussian,Uniform,Triangle and Epanechnikov are compared and find that Gaussian function is best considering the smoothness of the fit curve and data consistency.Through accumulative distribution,chi-square and Kolmogorov-Smirnov goodness of fit test,the sector capacity value distributions of 37 area control sectors and 30 approch control sectors are founded respectively.(3)According to the different static and dynamic features of sectors,nine complexity indicators for area control sectors and twelve complexity indicators for approach control sectors are drawn.Six different ranging methods,i.e.average linkage method,centroid hierarchiacal method,complete linkage method,median method,single linkage method and ward method are used to cluster the complexity indicators for both area control sectors and approach control sectors.It is found that approach control sectors are busier than area control sectors in most cases in China.The universality of static complexity indicators in approach control sectors is stronger than those in area control sectors.(4)Through correlation analysis of sector complexity indicators and sector capacity values,the linear equations and non-linear equations for area control and approach control sectors are proposed and validated.It is found that in area control sectors,the capacity value has negative correlation with sector perimeter and sector horizontal area,and in approach control sectors,the capacity value has negative correlation with inbound route numbers.But for both types of sectors,sector capacity values have positive correlations with total traffic volumes.Both linear equations and non-linear equations for area control and approach control sectors are tested notable.The fitting results of non-linear equations are better than linear equations both in area control sectors and in approach control sectors.The calculating results of non-linear equations have excelsior accuracy than linear equations.