Aeronautical Integrated Data Exchange Agent – Next Generation
AIDA-NG is COMSOFT’s Aeronautical Message Handling System (AMHS) based on the ECG (EATM Communication Gateway) software which was developed on behalf of EUROCONTROL in 2002 in order to bring uniformity to ground data networks. Moreover COMSOFT has designed the AIDA-NG product in close cooperation with the challenging demands of leading Air Navigation Service Providers.

The rapidly growing community of customers forms the COMSOFT AIDA User Group (CAUG) and significantly contributes to further enhancement of the product with valuable feedback.

With COMSOFT’s technical expertise and the clearly defined requirements of experienced operators a system was developed that sets the benchmark for modern AMHS implementation in terms of reliability, performance and functionality. Not only does AIDA NG fulfil all international aeronautical interoperability standards (AMHS, AFTN, CIDIN, SITA, OLDI) it is also superior to competitive products in its convenient and efficient support of sophisticated operational procedures.

AIDA-NG is the only AMHS/AFTN implementation on the market that provides fully integrated and uniform message handling facilities, such as efficient queue handling and tracing for all connected networks. Message tracing, for example, can be seamlessly performed through the AFTN/AMHS gateway. Multi-site systems (operational, contingency and test/training system) are supported by progressive configuration and administration means. AIDA-NG is based on up-to-date COTS servers and a powerful LINUX operating system. Therefore, it can be hosted on a variety of current and future platforms. This is particularly important regarding the upgrade path within the system’s lifetime.

Its excellent scalability and its supreme upgrade and extension possibilities qualify and allow the AIDA-NG system to keep pace with future developments and their resulting requirements. Due to this flexibility, its user-friendliness and its remarkable performance AIDA-NG is the ideal solution for aeronautical communication centres of any size. Therefore, it is not astonishing that the community of satisfied customers has steadily grown. In 2008, COMSOFT and its customers founded the COMSOFT AIDA User Group with the goal of jointly addressing the demanding needs of today’s and future aeronautical communication.

AIDA-NG perfectly fits in with the CADAS ATS/AFTN/AMHS User Agent solution.

• Open and fault-tolerant architecture
• Powerful message routing and queue handling
• Proven interoperability and standard conformance with AMHS, X.400 P1/P3/P7, ATN, AFTN, ADEXP, CIDIN, SITA Type B, OLDI/FMTP etc.
• Uniform integration of all network types
• Multi-site configuration management
  
• Fully integrated, easy-to-use HMI
• Excellent performance and throughput capacity 
• User-configurable online diagnostics and statistics
• Proven service availability of 99.9998%

AIDA-NG consists of three major components: the Core System, the Recording System and the Operator Working Positions (OWP); all of which can be hosted on two or more servers and computers that are interconnected by means of a redundant Fast-Ethernet LAN. Every part of the system is based on highly scalable COTS equipment. Therefore, all parts are independent of one another and can be extended and enhanced individually.

Core System

The Core System incorporates communication adaptors, protocol suites, routing and gateway facilities. Due to COMSOFT’s fully integrated core architecture all software components interact seamlessly. As a result, the system can not only be administrated in an innovative and efficient way but it also bears unmatched throughput and performance.
The Core System is composed of two identical communication units, which are run in an operational/hot standby combination. Both units constantly supervise each other’s hardware and software. In case of failure of the operational unit the hot standby unit is automatically activated and takes over the operational service immediately without loss of data. Depending on the environment this switchover is performed within less than a few seconds.

The Core System

• performs message handling and central routing tasks,
• houses duplicated physical LAN/WAN interfaces for the connection to external communication partners,
• executes LAN/WAN protocol stacks for the communication with all partner systems,
• is highly extensible in terms of performance and number of interfaces.
  

Recording System

The Recording System has two identical, mirrored database servers which are operated in parallel. The mirroring of the database servers is performed in the background with no effect on general operation.

The Recording System

• is a fully redundant database system,
• stores the traffic, statistical, and technical event databases (storage period configurable by database type),
• maintains static databases (system configurations, templates, archives, and other data),
• allows operators and applications to access all databases and archives directly and simultaneously.
  

Operator Working Positions

The Operator Working Position is the complex interface between user and system that provides uniform administration and monitoring facilities for all system components, networks and data. Every Operator Working Position is identical in its hardware and software and therefore provides the complete functional scope. The elaborate access right management grants both administrators and operators access to the respective system resources that are related to their tasks in the organization. Any number of Working Positions can be installed and used simultaneously.

Apart from hierarchically structured dialogues, menus and icons an object browser gives fast and direct access to related objects, such as system parameters and diagnostic values.

The Operator Working Positions

• provide a user-friendly HMI to access system resources, configurations, messages and queues,
• support team work by means of a sophisticated resource sharing concept,
• allow efficient access control by individually configurable user profiles,
• provide all system resources with simultaneous reading access,
• perform online checks on all entered data.
  

System Architecture

AIDA-NG excels with its high connectivity to both legacy and new adjacent systems. AIDA-NG supports all kinds of protocols and network types, i.e. not only the primary standard networks AFTN, CIDIN, and AMHS but also their variations, such as SMTP, AFTN/X.25 and
AFTN/TCP/IP. When designing AIDA-NG, COMSOFT paid special attention to the system’s ability to connect to the ATN and the AMHS network. COMSOFT later tested the interoperability of AIDA-NG with the ATN and AMHS networks in many international trials and thus lead the way to the global implementation of AMHS. The first European operational AMHS connection which has been set up with AIDA-NG between Germany and Spain shows COMSOFT’s pioneering work in practice.

The most effective way to achieve high service availability is to duplicate the system components. Thus, the system avoids the implementation of shared hardware components as typically used in standard cluster solutions available on the market. The advantage of a duplicated system is the exclusion of single points of failure. The AIDA-NG solution puts this approach consistently into practice as all of its major system components are duplicated. Power supplies, disks and network adaptors are also redundant. The benefit of this layout is a proven service availability of more than 99.9998%.

ECG is the European ATM Communication Gateway that COMSOFT developed for EUROCONTROL and its member states in 2002. ECG has made a significant contribution to the harmonization of European air traffic because of it’s interoperability with current and future networks. This, in turn, makes ECG an utmost flexible and versatile gateway. COMSOFT’s ECG software package was implemented according to EUROCONTROL’s user requirement specification (URD) and officially accepted by EUROCONTROL after a period of extensive testing.

Since COMSOFT’s integration of the ECG technology into its AMHS product AIDA-NG, a vast group of European and internationally based ATC centres can benefit from this achievement. AIDA-NG hosts the advanced stage of ECG and therefore not only incorporates all benefits and advantages that ECG provides but also exceeds its specifications. In fact, the system is a leading-edge solution owing to its continuous adaption to pertinent ICAO standards and customers’ challenging requirements. So far such adaptions include unified message handling for AMHS, AFTN, CIDIN, and SITA networks, refined message handling facilities and a self-explanatory HMI.

No matter for which purpose the system is employed – ranging from small front-end-processor solutions to international message switches with the highest demands on throughput and latency – AIDA-NG can easily fulfil the necessary requirements due to its impressive scalability and outstanding performance.

CMS

CADAS

CNMS– Network Management Station

Although the AIDA-NG system can be supervised and monitored from each Operator Working Position, it is sometimes desirable to monitor the system within its unique site infrastructure. Especially if several other systems are installed at the site, the supervision via a single site control and monitoring station is most attractive. CNMS is a powerful product to monitor and control all kinds of systems in the ATC domain. It collects all required data from various SNMP agents and provides it to the end user by means of a comfortable graphical user interface with various logical views.

In general CNMS comes pre-configured to support COMSOFT products, such as the proposed system AIDA-NG. However, systems of other manufacturers can equally be monitored if they support the SNMP protocol or offer other standard monitoring interfaces. A dedicated software interface allows to integrate own applications and scripts in order to enhance the rich functionality of CNMS even more.

CADAS-ATS: The AIDA-NG Complement

COMSOFT‘s Aeronautical Data Access System (CADAS) is a cutting-edge web-based ATS user terminal system that provides advanced, yet convenient, access facilities to all services related to ATC and aeronautical data. Innovative concepts facilitate and improve ATS messaging considerably, while keeping the focus on ATC-specific work-flows and maximised ease of use.

CADAS is a suite of client/server-based applications that can be optimally tailored to the specific needs of airports and ATC centres. Since CADAS supports both AFTN and AMHS networks it thus ensures a reliable and at the same time a cost-saving solution for the migration from AFTN to AMHS.

Administration capabilities directly influence the total cost of ownership of a system. AIDA-NG’s centralized concept helps to keep maintenance costs at a minimum. AIDA-NG is equipped with tools that allow a centralized administration of main and contingency systems, further allowing the user to manage software releases and administer global system configuration data centrally. During power-up, the components are updated automatically with all required data.

The individual components that make up the system can be monitored by one or many Operator Working Positions simultaneously. The Working Positions display the state of both the system as a whole and its major single components so that all operators are continuously informed about status changes. The Operator Working Positions also immediately display any irregular state of peripheral network components, which are monitored by means of SNMP.

Further systems at remote locations such as additional contingency and test systems can additionally be administered, monitored, and controlled by the very same OWP.

This brings about the following advantages:

• No more time-consuming and error-prone manual software installations and upgrades on single system components and remote sites.
• Centralized management of numerous systems helps to reduce personnel costs, and flexibility and surveillance functions are increased.
• The smooth switchover from one site to another makes contingency management very safe and simple. If configured, the system permanently updates fallback databases on a remote contingency system. Switching over the operational services is therefore only a matter of minutes.

System Inspection

Throughout all levels, the system permanently collects diagnostics and statistics of all available resources and displays them in real-time, such as:

• system component states and resources,
• message routing,
• remote connection states and protocol-stack-related values (data line monitoring),
• operating system and hardware states.

Based on diagnostic values the system generates absolute, average and peak statistics in different resolutions (minute, hour, day, month, year). All values can be displayed, printed, and exported to spreadsheet applications such as Microsoft® Office Excel. The connection status to communication partners can be visualized in logical and geographical maps.

System Parameter Handling

Virtually all system parameters can be changed and activated online without the need to restart the system.

The hardware-related configuration is part of the system parameters. The modification of these parameters neither influences the system’s performance nor its availability.
Parameter input is menu-driven and facilitated by selection lists.

Input values are immediately checked on validity and again cross-checked against related parameters restraining the user from entering inconsistent data. This, in turn, enhances the system’s high robustness and outstanding stability.

Event & Alarm Handling

All modifications in the system are reported and stored as events.
The visual and acoustic presentation of events can be configured individually with the help of the corresponding alarm attributes.

Message Database Handling & Archiving

The storage period is configurable (up to several years). All stored data is accessible online. No distinction between short-term and long-term storage is necessary. Data can be automatically and manually archived to removable media and can be viewed with the same powerful tools as the online databases.

AIDA-NG provides a unique and uniform message tracing function which is independent of the respective message type. This makes it possible to retrieve, for example, an incoming AFTN message and to trace its related outgoing AMHS messages and vice versa.
Flexible filters facilitate systematic message retrieval.

Performance

AIDA-NG systems have been tested and approved to switch a permanent load of nearly 400 messages per second at an input/output ratio of 1:2. High message loads do not affect the excellent response time of the Operator Working Positions.

Overload situations are prevented by means of extensive flow control mechanisms.
Certain circumstances, such as a great number of queued messages caused by temporary outages of communication partners, do not affect the overall system performance.

Routing & Message Handling

AIDA-NG provides integrated standard AFTN, CIDIN, SITA and AMHS message routing and gateway functions. Standard AFTN/SITA/AMHS routing functions are enhanced by the possibility of copying, redirecting and pausing messages. AIDA-NG can act as a mere gateway between networks since it can switch messages transparently.

Received/transmitted messages can be monitored online per circuit.
Pending messages in outgoing queues can be monitored online (per circuit), accessed directly and re-routed, redirected to other destinations, blocked and removed.
AIDA-NG harmonizes the queue handling procedures for all supported networks.
Outgoing message queues are permanently checked as regards their length and whether they contain messages with an expired lifetime (overdue messages). Messages to be processed (copied, redirected etc.) can be explicitly specified by means of flexible filters.