Analysis of flight-efficient ecosystem solutions in a multi-aircraft conflict environment

To accommodate future demands in air traffic management, this article qualitatively elaborates the multi-aircraft conflict resolution relying on the concept of an airborne ecosystem, as a set of autonomously operating aircraft whose trajectories are causally involved in a tactically detected conflict. The methodology provides two types of solutions: air traffic control-based resolution that is executed as a set of compulsory avoidance maneuvers at a certain time instance, and the multi-agent simulated resolution as a product of the aircraft negotiation interactions and agreement on the avoidance maneuvers for the conflict state removal. The article further analyses a flight efficiency of the ecosystem resolution, in both distance and time, by comparing the compulsory against the negotiated solutions. From the total amount of tested trajectories and identified conflict patterns, three ecosystem scenarios have been selected and analyzed. Finally, the results have shown the significant savings in favor of the multi-agent solution approach.