7.1. DESCRIPTION OF AESS
7.1.1. INTEGRATION OF SURVEILLANCE FUNCTIONS
The Aircraft Environment Surveillance System (AESS) is an integrated system that ensures the surveillance function on-board the A380 aircraft. AESS includes:
.. The Aircraft Identification and Position Reporting function: Transponder
.. The Traffic Surveillance function: TCAS II
.. The Terrain Surveillance function: TAWS
.. The Weather Surveillance function: Weather radar with PWS capability.
The Runway Surveillance function is outside the AESS scope and is supported by the OANS (refer to 5.1 – Description of OANS).
The integration of these functions removes some drawbacks brought by individual surveillance systems. Indeed, the well-known surveillance systems had been defined to cope with one single issue and had appeared all along the aviation history: the weather radar in 1970’s, the GPWS in 1974, the TCAS in 1990’s and the PWS in 1994.
The drawbacks of a cumulative architecture, resulting from the history of surveillance functions, are:
- Limited management of alert priority,
- Poor interactivity between functions,
- Multiplication of control panels,
- Heterogeneous alerts from various manufacturers,
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Complex management of spares of different systems from various manufacturers,
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Complex installation (wiring, antennas),
- Weight, size, consumption, and maintenance tasks multiplied by the number of systems,
- High global cost.
From an operational perspective, AESS optimizes the layout of controls and displays in the cockpit:
- EFIS CP: Controls of display
- ND: Display of surveillance information
- PFD: Display of alerts
- ECAM: Display of failures or memo
- SURV panel on pedestal: Quick access to controls of main surveillance functions
- MFD SURV page: Access to all surveillance functions (settings, status, and reconfiguration).
7.1.2. AESS ARCHITECTURE
The AESS includes:
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Two Aircraft Environment Surveillance Units (AESU),
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Two Radar Transceiver Units (RTU) that makes the interface between AESU and the weather radar antenna,
.
One Weather Antenna Drive Unit (WADU) that ensures the scanning movement of the weather radar antenna and its stabilization,
.
One weather radar flat antenna,
.
One SURV panel,
.
Four identical TCAS/Mode S antennas.
Each AESU includes three modules:
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TCAS/XPDR module: A single module contains the TCAS and XPDR functions to take benefits from a higher integration: smaller size, lower consumption, simpler design, shared TCAS/XPDR antennas,
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