SEMINAR – Communications, Navigation, and Surveillance Systems in the National Airspace System – Status, Standards, and Plans

Abstract:

Communications, Navigation, and Surveillance (CNS) systems within the National Airspace System (NAS) have had a marked evolution over the last 25 years. The status of these systems, requirements for and issues with transition to new CNS Systems, and future CNS system plans in the context of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) will be discussed.

NASA’s UAS Traffic Management (UTM) system for the enablement of low-altitude civilian UAS operations has been in development for several years and in June 2017 conducted demonstrations of its Technology Capability Level 2, focused on flying small, remotely-operated UAS beyond the pilot’s line of sight in sparsely populated areas. An overview of UTM status and plans will be provided.

The talk will conclude with a brief discussion of a newly-formed National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Committee on Assessing Risks of UAS Integration, which is chaired by Dr. Ligler. The Committee’s first meetings were held in September and December 2017.

Biography:

George Ligler is Proprietor of GTL Associates, which has provided consulting services in the aviation, computer, and telecommunications systems industries to 42 clients on 3 continents. George holds a B.S. degree in mathematics from Furman University and masters and doctorate degrees in computer science from Oxford University, where his studies were supported by a Rhodes Scholarship. After starting his career with the University of Texas at San Antonio and as a project and research manager at Texas Instruments, George was responsible for 475 research and development engineers at Burroughs’ Special Systems Division. Subsequently, George was President of a computer graphics manufacturer and a Division and Group Vice President at Computer Sciences Corporation. In 1988, George founded GTL Associates, a consultancy, and has performed extensive consulting in telecommunications systems engineering, computer system engineering and hardware/software engineering, all across a wide variety of applications, with a number of assignments in aviation. George has led aviation standards committees in both the U.S. and at the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) related to digital avionics, particularly for navigation, surveillance, and unmanned aircraft systems. He was a founding co-chair of RTCA Special Committee 228, Minimum Operational Performance Standards for Unmanned Aircraft Systems, from 2013 to 2015. Since 1990, George has had 18 years of service on 4 U.S. National Research Council panels and one U.S. National Academies Standing Committee, and in August 2017 he was named Chair of a new U.S. National Academies Committee on Assessing Risks of Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration. George has won RTCA’s 2006 and 2017 Achievement Awards (aviation standards) and was a member of the recipient team for a U.S. Air Traffic Control Association 2015 Chairman’s Citation Award of Merit for his Plenary leadership of the FAA/Industry’s Equip 2020 initiative for Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B). At NC State, he is a member and Secretary of the Industrial Advisory Board for the NC State/UNC Chapel Hill Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME). In February 2017, he was elected to the Special Fields and Interdisciplinary Engineering Section of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering “For leadership and engineering innovation in specifying and implementing complex computer-based systems for aviation and the U.S. Census.”