Critical Structure Analysis And Optimization For Air Route Network

In recent years,the contradiction between fast-growing demand of airspace resources and slow-rising supper of air route network(ARN)leads to severe problems in air traffic operation,causing increasing congestion of air traffic and flight delays.The great difficulty of improving airspace resources makes the way of optimizing ARN becoming one of the most effective methods to augment airspace capacity,improve efficiency of air traffic operation and mitigate flight delays and congestions,as well as a critical research area around the globe.In this work,we focus on the optimization of ARN's critical structure—crossing waypoint(CWP),starting from fundamental structure of ARN to investigate the inner mechanism of how air route crossing angles and crossing route length will influence the operation of air traffic,to reveal the interrelationship between the parameters of air traffic and fundamental elements of air route structure.Based on that,mathematical statistics' method was employed to analyze the relationship between fundamental structure of ARN and flight time(fuel consumption).In the basis of non-linear distribution characteristics of air traffic in area of crossing air route,a preference model was developed to optimize the CWP's structure,and related algorithm was also devised to figure out proposed model.Finally,experimental studies were performed to testify the effectiveness and efficiency of proposed model.After studying the fundamental structure of ARN,this work proposed a novel artificial potential field(APF)model.Based on that model,an optimization framework of CWPs was created to optimize the different airspace topologies varying the number of CWPs,air route segments and PRDs.In this framework,an adaptive method was devised to dynamically control the optimization process in the purpose of minimizing the total air route costs.The application of the proposed model was made on one of the busiest Chinese controlled airspace with historical flight plan data and experimental results demonstrate the good performance of proposed model.This research is conducive for improving the quality of air traffic operation from the view of airspace resource supply.By adjusting weight coefficients of the model,this research enables different airspace users striking a balance of their demands between flight time and fuel consumption.The proposed ARN structure optimization framework has a good performance in suitability of airspace configuration,data-based optimization,etc.Our work can also be benefit for the understanding and optimizing of other real-world network systems.