Advances in applying cloud computing techniques for air traffic systems

The rapid growth of air traffic flow has put tremendous pressure on the air traffic management (ATM) industry. The contradiction between flight flow, air traffic control service and airspace capability has become increasingly prominent, and the support capability of civil aviation transportation has attracted the social attention. In order to meet the increasing flow management requirements of ATM stakeholders, a cloud computing-based ATM flow management architecture is designed and implemented within the project of Regional Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) system in North China Air Traffic Management Bureau (N-ATMB). By adopting the techniques of Virtualization, distributed computing and data-driven services, the system benefits from a scalable and flexible platform architecture that ensures the ability to handle the growing volume of air traffic data. The characteristics and advantages of cloud computing techniques are compared and analyzed. This implementation has proved the high availability of the cloud-based system, the security of data storage, and the convenience of information sharing between operational systems.