PAGE CONTENTS
Objectives
The project has the ultimate objective of providing stakeholders with a comprehensive CBA of different future satellite solutions for Air Traffic Management (ATM). The goal is to provide actors with the relevant technological and economic benefits of satellite solutions and its associated costs, to incentivise their development and accelerate the modernisation of the ATM systems. The project activities are focused on:
- Satellite as a key pillar for Communication, Navigation and Surveillance services modernisation, supporting automation, connectivity and digitalisation
- Satellite for autonomous drones, providing ATM and command and control
- Satellite for a high-capacity, affordable data link that provides increased connectivity for both safety and non-safety purposes
To support the development of the CBAs and the identification of promising business cases, the project portrays the main characteristics of the sector, including main stakeholders, current business models, entry barriers, size of ATM market in terms of users and revenues and key drivers for ATM modernisation. It also identifies gaps & opportunities, taking into account the technological trends, spectrum & regulatory issues and the expected evolution of the ATM services.
Challenges
One of the challenges of the project is to identify innovative and high-potential satellite concepts of operations that can be attractive for stakeholders and a major contribution to the modernisation of ATM, while being feasible from a regulatory, technological and economical point of view. Another challenge is to assess costs and benefits of proposed business cases adequately, given the focus on the long-term and its associated uncertainties.
System Architecture
The diagram below shows how the different tasks described above provide the inputs to generate the CBAs:
- Task 1 provides a good understanding of the market characteristics
- Task 2 provide the CONOPS definition and associated costs
- Task 3 provide the different scenarios (pessimistic, baseline, optimistic) for the users of the market (i.e. traffic growth), and the revenue streams from the services provided
Each CONOPS shall be associated to one or more services, the services revenues streams will be aggregated and compared to the cost of the solution. Ultimately, each CONOPS shall be associated to one of the business cases.
At the end, each business case shall have at least one CONOPS assigned, with a CBA per CONOPS including three potential scenarios (pessimistic, baseline and optimistic).
Scenario definition, from CONOPS to Business Case
Plan
Project phases and milestones are described below:
- After project kick-off, Task 1 and Task 2 are started in parallel and results are discussed during the MTR milestone.
- Successful MTR kicks-off Tasks 3 and 4, which also run mainly in parallel, and will have an expected duration of 3 months. This phase finalizes with the FR milestone.
Additionally, one progress meeting is foreseen in the middle of each phase (PM#1, PM#2).
Current Status
Activities foreseen in Tasks 1 and 2 are progressing and progress and the MTR has been successfully held.
