New features and improved capabilities are continually added to PAS to support ongoing and future Air Traffic Control system development. The Simulation Manager, the heart of the PAS system, serves as the control center for the overall aircraft simulation. It provides the computer link between the PAS network and the Air Traffic Control system. The Simulation Manager also contains the kinematic models of the individual aircraft comprising the simulated traffic scenario. The kinematic models process commands to produce aircraft state variables which are used to generate the simulated radar track data, the primary output of the system.
Kinematic models representing both commercial transports and private aircraft are available.
Each aircraft in the scenario is modeled independently. Aircraft acceleration is computed in three dimensions based upon external forces, integrated twice and transformed to the appropriate coordinate system to represent the aircraft's radar track. The piloting logic within the PAS Aerodynamics process is a complex control algorithm that guides each aircraft along the desired flight path in response to commands from the pseudopilots. This piloting logic processes pseudopilot commands to generate appropriate inputs to an aircraft model and monitors the resulting aircraft motion. Additional control adjustments may be generated to nullify the error between the desired and the actual flight path.