The Agency for Aerial Navigation Safety in Africa and Madagascar (ASECNA) and satellite systems company Aireon have come to an agreement regarding the use of space-based ADS-B for surveillance services.
The agreement comes into effect from 1 January 2020 within the six flight information regions (FIRs) of ASECNA: Antananarivo, Brazzaville, Dakar Terrestrial, Dakar Oceanic, N’djamena and Niamey. This follows nearly two years of collaboration on terrestrial surveillance.
Automatic dependent surveillance — broadcast (ADS–B) is a surveillance technology in which an aircraft determines its position via satellite navigation and periodically broadcasts it, enabling it to be tracked.
ASECNA is an international public institution. Its main mission consists in ensuring safety in air navigation. With this surveillance expansion, ASECNA will have 100 percent real-time air traffic surveillance over the entire 16.1 million square kilometres of its controlled airspace. As of July 2019, Aireon data currently reaches ASECNA centres in two different points, Dakar and Abidjan, and is then distributed via very small aperture terminal (VSAT) to all the other centres.
The announcement, say the partners, ensures 100 percent surveillance across Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroun, CAR, Comores, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Guinée Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, France, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Sénégal, Chad and Togo.
This service expansion over water also benefits ASECNA’s operations over land. By connecting oceanic and terrestrial with the same space-based ADS-B data, the air navigation service provider (ANSP) will be able to safely reduce aircraft separation minima, adding more capacity and allowing preferred routes to airlines.