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Research and Development to Conduct Air-ground Functional Allocation Studies (Task 341) The NASA Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) - Airspace Project, under the Airspace Systems Program (ASP), directly addresses the fundamental air traffic management (ATM) research needs for NextGen (www.jpdo.gov/nextgen.asp) by developing revolutionary concepts, capabilities, and technologies that will enable significant increases in the capacity, efficiency and flexibility of the National Airspace System (NAS). Functional allocation of roles and responsibilities in Air Traffic Management has been identified as a research thrust (area of significant interest) for NASA's Separation Assurance (SA) focus area. The SA focus area is concerned with the separation of air traffic, conflict detection of aircraft trajectories, and resolution of any conflicts. Key issues within SA are the division of responsibility between automation and humans and between aircraft operators and air traffic service providers. Research under the Airspace Project is focused on airborne traffic conflict detection and resolution technology. There is a need for a traffic generation tool that enables the Air Traffic Operations Simulation (ATOS) to generate large numbers of simulated aircraft across the national airspace and use them as a platform to test airborne traffic conflict detection and resolution algorithms and capabilities. Traffic generation automated tools provide the capability to assume different airframe models and flight characteristics to support air-ground functional allocation studies, as well as studies in many other areas. The ATOS is a suite of software capabilities providing a medium-to-high fidelity airspace environment research platform within NASA Langley's Air Traffic Operations Laboratory (ATOL). The ATOL houses a suite of complex, high-fidelity simulation systems dedicated to the research of advanced Air Traffic Management (ATM) concepts and technologies. The objective of the task titled "Research and Development to Conduct Air-ground Functional Allocations Studies" is to create and document a multi-aircraft simulation tool that will extend the current capabilities of the medium fidelity simulation software being used by researchers and in the Air Traffic Operations Laboratory (ATOL) for traffic generation, scenario creation, batch experiments, data recording, rapid prototyping, algorithm development and testing, demonstrations and other functions. This multi-aircraft simulation tool will expand the simulation capabilities and the ability to conduct meaningful research within air-ground functional allocation for separation assurance.

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