System Design Considerations of ADS-B
A concern for any ADS-B protocol is the capacity for carrying ADS-B messages from aircraft, as well as allowing the radio channel to continue to support any legacy services. For 1090ES, each ADS-B message is composed of a pair of data packets. The greater the number of packets transmitted from one aircraft, the lesser the number of aircraft that can participate in the system, due to the fixed and limited channel data bandwidth.
System capacity is defined by establishing a criterion for what the worst environment is likely to be, then making that a minimum requirement for system capacity. For 1090ES, both TCAS and ATCRBS/MSSR are existing users of the channel. 1090ES ADS-B must not reduce capacity of these existing systems.
The FAA national program office and other international aviation regulators are addressing concerns about ADS-B non-secure nature of ADS-B transmissions. ADS-B messages can be used to know the location of an aircraft, and there is no means to guarantee that this information is not used inappropriately. Additionally, there are some concerns about the integrity of ADS-B transmissions. ADS-B messages can be produced, with simple, low-cost measures, which spoof the locations of multiple phantom aircraft to disrupt safe air travel. There is no foolproof means to guarantee integrity, but there are means to monitor for this type of activity. This problem is however similar to the usage of ATCRBS/MSSR where false signals also are potentially dangerous (uncorrelated secondary tracks).
There are some concerns about ADS-B dependence on satellite navigation systems to generate state vector information, although the risks can be mitigated by using redundant sources of state vector information; e.g., GPS, GLONASS, Galileo or multilateration.
There are some general aviation concerns that ADS-B removes anonymity of the VFR aircraft operations. The ICAO 24-bit transponder code specifically assigned to each aircraft will allow monitoring of that aircraft when within the service volumes of the Mode-S/ADS-B system. Unlike the Mode A/C transponders, there is no code "1200"/"7000", which offers casual anonymity. Mode-S/ADS-B identifies the aircraft uniquely among all in the world, in a similar fashion as a MAC number for an Ethernet card or the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) of a GSM phone. However, the FAA is allowing UAT-equipped aircraft to utilize a random self-assigned temporary ICAO address in conjunction with the use of beacon code 1200. 1090ES equipped aircraft using ADS-B will not have this option.
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