ADS-B America
ITT's ADS-B Solution
The FAA knew what had to be accomplished under NextGen and knew that ADS-B was central to the effort. But the FAA wasn't quite sure on how to make it happen. So they initiated a screening competition, asking prospective bidders to supply creative and innovative approaches on how to build and manage the system. The FAA narrowed the competitive field down to three bidders. Then, on August 30, 2007, the FAA announced the winner of a $1.8 billion contract to build and manage through 2025 the foundation of the nation's next-generation air-traffic control system. The winner, of course, was ITT's ADS-B solution.
"The best value"
ITT designed its ADS-B solution to be low-risk and high-performance—a solution that offered low life-cycle cost and full compliance with the letter and spirit of FAA service requirements. In making the award, Vincent Capezzuto, director of the FAA's ADS-B program, said that ITT's proposal presented "the best value" and "no technical risks."
A blue-ribbon team
ITT put together a blue-ribbon team to design, develop, maintain and operate this new system. Team members were chosen by ITT based upon their unique experience and complementary skills.
| Team Member | Role |
|---|---|
| ITT Corporation | Prime contractor, system engineering and integration, control station software development, radio station integration, system deployment, system operations and maintenance |
| AT&T | Network |
| Thales | Radios, multi-sensor tracker |
| WSI | Weather service provider |
| Sunhillo | Service Delivery Point (SDP) equipment |
| Pragmatics | Software development support |
| SAIC | Engineering and implementation support |
Together with our other team members we are the low-risk, high-performance solution for ADS-B.
The ITT essential services architecture
ITT will build and own an estimated 794 ground stations, four data control stations at AT&T Data Hosting Centers (Boston, Atlanta, Phoenix and Seattle) for message processing, and two network operations centers (the primary in Oakton, VA and a backup center in Middletown, NJ) to run the system and provide redundancy. NextGen data will be delivered to the FAA at 271 Service Delivery Points located at FAA Air Traffic Control facilities (Towers, TRACONs and En-Route Centers).
While the physical architecture of the ITT designed ABS-B system is relatively straightforward, the underlying subsystem architecture of ITT's innovative and cost-efficient technical solution for spectrum management, wireless engineering and spectral efficiency is anything but. ITT's solution provides:
- A flexible, scalable, safe and secure system architecture.
- Technical features to include multi-channel radios with power control features, sectorized antennas, data distribution algorithms, and system-siting to ensure the ability to operate within the current and future spectrum environment.
- Systems, processes and personnel to ensure very high system availability.
- A large number of radio stations assuring system radio frequency coverage are provided where required.
At the core of the ITT architecture is safety through reliability and redundancy. Every system from the 794 ground stations to the processing stations, to the weather data center to the service delivery points and all the communication links between them, has been designed for maximum efficiency and reliability. Everything is backed up, and backed up again, to prevent any possibility of failure.