Sri Lanka commences Automatic Dependence Surveillance Operations

November, 17, 2017

Minister of Transport & Civil Aviation Nimal Siripala De Silva yesterday (15th Nov.) inaugurated the Automatic Dependence Surveillance – Broadcast (ADS-B) Operations at the Ratmalana Colombo Airport Area Control Centre.

Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast (ADS-B) is considered as one of the latest developments in the surveillance technologies used for Air Traffic Control purposes.

ADS-B system in-fact provides Radar-like information to the Air Traffic control Centres on ground to determine the position, altitude, speed etc., of aircraft in-flight based on specific type of messages broadcast by the aircraft which containing its position information derived from the GPS. It’s less costly as it does not involve any Transmitters on Ground but only a set of Receivers located at selected locations in the country to capture the signals emitted by the aircraft, which are sent to a Central Processing Unit, which present the positional information of Aircraft within the applicable range, to the Air Traffic Control Centres on ground.

The ADS-B implementation project was awarded to ERA a.s of Czech Republic through an international competitive bidding process. Airport & Aviation Services (SL) Ltd., is proud to mention that the System Design and Site selection for ADS-B Receivers, meeting the optimized coverage requirements, have been carried out by its own team of Electronics Engineers without the services of any external consultancy services. The ADS-B system has been successfully tested and Flight Inspected in July 2017.

ADS-B data received from all 05 Receivers located at BIA, MRIA, Pidurutalagala, Kilinochchi and Suriyakanda are now successfully fused and integrated with the existing Air Traffic Management (ATM) System at the Area Control Centre located at Ratmalana Airport.