Call for Proposals: Enhanced CNS Capabilities

Scope

• The following list of R&I needs is proposed as an illustration of the potential project content, but it is not meant as prescriptive. Proposals may include other research elements beyond the proposed research elements below if they are justified by their contribution to achieve the expected outcomes of the topic and are fully aligned with the development priorities defined in the European ATM Master Plan.
  • CNS as a service
    • Research shall address potential solutions for the provision of communication, navigation, and surveillance functionalities as a cloud-based or subscription-based service (CNSaaS) by an independent organisation. CNSaaS aims at offering these critical functionalities to aviation stakeholders, such as airlines, aircraft operators, and air navigation service providers, as a service model. Research results shall enable the decoupling of CNS service provision from the physical location of the infrastructure as outlined in the target architecture defined in the European ATM Master Plan.
    • The scope covers the identification of possible CNS technologies and functions that could be provided as a CNS as a service and the development of relevant business models that could provide these CNS services including the assessment of technical requirements, such as spectrum management and efficiency, redundancy, flexibility of equipage of avionics and cyber security. Note that there is on-going work under project CNS-DSP. Research shall also consider the guidance material on CNS service assessment produced by PJ.14-W2-76 in SESAR 2020.
    • This includes the development of CNS infrastructure monitoring services.
  • New air/ground technologies for the integration of high-altitude pseudo satellites (HAPS), hypersonic and supersonic vehicles and space launches.
    • Higher airspace operations (HAO) represent one of the most profound changes to the aviation ecosystem for many years. The number of space operations, high-altitude pseudo-satellites (HAPS), supersonic and hypersonic vehicles is set to steadily increase in the years ahead. This research area aims at developing new (or adapting exiting) air / ground CNS capabilities to ensure the safe and efficient integration of hypersonic and supersonic vehiclesinto ATM.
  • Satellite based multilateration (MLAT)
    • Nowadays, surveillance tracking systems rely on self-reported positions of aircraft, which are derived from GNSS satellites, which can be affected by interferences caused by different causes (e.g., spoofing, jamming, etc.).
    • This research element covers the development of a complementary, resilient, space-based surveillance infrastructure, which uses a low earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation to track aircraft by determining their exact position based on multilateration (MLAT) (i.e., using different times of arrivals of radio frequency (RF) signals). By independently verifying the location of an aircraft through geolocation satellite based MLAT technology, the proposed solution shall be able to track a plane in real time from take-off to landing
    • Research shall address the end-to-end validation of the proposed solution including both satellite (space segment and space network) and ground ATM components and determine and validate both functional and non-functional (i.e., performance) requirements. It is acknowledged that performing an end-to-end TRL6 validation with LEO constellation may be challenging; therefore, the proposals shall consider, as a preliminary step, the maturity of the different segments (space segment, space network, ground segment) separately, and clearly identify the risks to achieve TRL6. Also, research shall cover the description of future operations and service definition.
  • Use of ADS-B phase overlay
    • The objective is to develop applications that take advantage of the ADS-B phase overlay, for example:
      • Secure ADS-B: Currently, there are no means to know if a single ADS-B message is valid or not, or if the sender is real or fake. For verification, surveillance systems correlate several messages and sources, what requires efforts and infrastructure. Research shall aim at completing the R&I work on this use case, to increase the security of ADS-B introducing authentication through the data capacity provided by phase overlay. The research should investigate how secure ADS-B might allow the rationalization of the surveillance infrastructure, especially Mode S. Note that there is on-going work on this use case (to “anonymize” the ADS-B messages) under project MITRANO.
      • Applications of ADS-B phase overlay that allow a reduction in the congestion of the 1030/1090 MHz frequency, which can lead to situations where the system performance does not comply with the safety required for specific separation applications, what leads to restrictions to access the airspace, potentially inducing delays and flight cancellation.
  • Collaborative cyber security framework for CNS
    • Current aeronautical cyber security standards, recommended methodologies, and state of the art, responses to cybersecurity-threats and processes are based on some key assumptions:
      • Aircraft is managing its own security and certification is managed at aircraft level only.
      • Security solutions often rely on a binary trusted/untrusted security model.
      • Security working groups and technical standards covering different aspects of the whole architecture work as silos.
    • Those assumptions may not be sufficient to provide effective and long-term defence against cyber security attacks to automated aeronautical CNS environment.
    • Research shall aim at defining and validating a global security collaboration framework based on uses cases across CNS domains, considering the end-to-end chain to address cybersecurity at global level. Research shall consider the network level cybersecurity when network is not aviation specific: what kind of cybersecurity requirements need to be put in the service provider, including addressing common points of failure.
    • Research shall address potential solutions to mitigate radio frequency interference based on different techniques (e.g., filtering out jamming signals, etc.) or evaluating solutions employed in non-aviation applications, dynamic jamming/spoofing information sharing and the potential application of AI in this field. Research shall focus on developing aircraftinstalled active radio antennas capable of adapting itself to the attack and mitigating the impact of radio jamming attacks. Military requirements shall be addressed. This research element also covers the monitoring and mitigation of the potential cybersecurity risks that may be introduced with the new entrants (e.g., HAO).
  • Combined airborne and ground dual-frequency multi-constellation (DFMC) ground-based augmentation system (GBAS) GAST-E approach service
    • Develop DFMC GBAS (GBAS GAST-E) to maximise the benefits of this technology, including for CAT II/III operations, to allow for more robust operations, including at high and low latitudes with tougher ionospheric conditions. This element also addresses increased resilience to radio frequency interference on a single band and increased resilience to singleconstellation outages or failures.
  • Ground-based Alternative – Position, Navigation and Timing (A-PNT)
    • Global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) including Galileo and the European geostationary navigation overlay service (EGNOS), are usually considered as suitable technologies for providing position, navigation, and timing (PNT) information as required. However, GNSS can be subject to local (e.g., interference, spoofing, jamming) or global (ionospheric issues, system fault) outages, and it also presents service limitations in those areas where there is limited sky visibility.
    • With the objective of having a back-up solution for GNSS as the source of PNT in the situations above, several potential technological solutions have been or are being developed to provide alternate position navigation and timing (A-PNT). The proposed solution aims therefore at enhancing service resilience (e.g., to RFI), availability, and continuity. This requires the support of industry standards to ensure the required interoperability. The proposed solutions should investigate how their developments fit into the larger cross-domain European complementary PNT (C-PNT) framework. The notion of C-PNT aims at building a larger European PNT ecosystem to mitigate the risk of PNT service interruption, which includes GNSS and several complementary emerging alternative systems.
    • Research shall address the different options for time synchronisation (in particular during GNSS outages). On this point, there is on-going work performed by MIAR SESAR solution 0336 “LDACS-NAV solution & Modular Integration of A-PNT technologies solution”.

Funding Information

• Budget (EUR) – Year 2025: 20 000 000
• Contirbutions: 5000000 to 10000000
• The maximum project duration is 36 months.

Expected Outcomes

• To significantly advance the following development actions:
  • IR-3-01 Next generation ATC platform: addresses the next generation ATC platform, fully leveraging aircraft capabilities. This includes supporting a data-sharing service delivery model, resilient integrated CNS/MET as a service, traffic synchronisation, etc., accommodating the specific needs of the military, innovative air mobility (IAM), higher airspace operations (HAO), and U-space, etc.
  • IR-3-09 CNS capabilities to increase ATM system robustness (e.g., satellite-based multilateration (MLAT)), GBAS dual frequency/multi constellation leveraging Galileo and providing robust protection against jamming and spoofing).
• This includes advancing the capabilities of the following systems:
  • CNS systems: improved navigation and surveillance systems.
  • ATS systems: ability of core ATS platforms for en-route and TMA operations to leverage CNS data as a service.

Eligibility Criteria

• Entities eligible to participate:
  • Entities eligible to participate Any legal entity, regardless of its place of establishment, including legal entities from nonassociated third countries or international organisations (including international European research organisations) is eligible to participate (whether it is eligible for funding or not), provided that the conditions laid down in the Horizon Europe Regulation have been met, along with any other conditions laid down in the specific call/topic.
  • A ‘legal entity’ means any natural or legal person created and recognised as such under national law, EU law or international law, which has legal personality and which may, acting in its own name, exercise rights and be subject to obligations, or an entity without legal personality .
• Entities eligible for funding :
  • To become a beneficiary, legal entities must be eligible for funding. To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the following countries:
    • the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions:
      • Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden.
    • the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States:
      • Aruba (NL), Bonaire (NL), Curação (NL), French Polynesia (FR), French Southern and Antarctic Territories (FR), Greenland (DK), New Caledonia (FR), Saba (NL), Saint Barthélemy (FR), Sint Eustatius (NL), Sint Maarten (NL), St. Pierre and Miquelon (FR), Wallis and Futuna Islands (FR).
    • countries associated to Horizon Europe;
      • Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Tunisia, Türkiye, Ukraine, United Kingdom.

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