Alaska company completes deep mountain test of its new space-based air traffic surveillance system. Could this be the key to early global adoption of ADS-B?

For Immediate Release

ANCHORAGE, Alaska/EWORLDWIRE/May 4, 2012 --- ADS-B Technologies LLC has announced the completion of the first public demonstration of its revolutionary space-based Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) air traffic control surveillance system in the deep mountain passes of Alaska. The tests, conducted during the third week in April, demonstrated conclusively that highly accurate, reliable and low latency surveillance is now possible at any altitude and over any terrain from virtually anywhere on earth.

"We chose the worst possible conditions for the test, assuming that if we could prove that an aircraft could be reliably tracked only a few hundred feet off the ground in a 4,000-foot deep mountain pass, then it could be tracked just about anywhere else on earth," said Skip Nelson, ADS-B Technologies president. "The data that we collected from two aircraft sometimes flying in close formation clearly demonstrates that we have a viable system. Over-the-horizon, or space-based ADS-B, is now a reality."

The new technology is called the ADS-B Link Augmentation System, or "ALAS". It is a true over-the-horizon air traffic surveillance system capable of delivering an uncorrupted 1090ES or UAT payload to an Air Traffic Control (ATC) automation system in real-time from remote, oceanic, or mountainous areas where a conventional line of sight connection to a terrestrial ADS-B ground station is either impossible, or impractical. ALAS is also designed to be unobtrusive and subordinate to conventional line of sight ADS-B and therefore will not interfere with normal payload delivery to other aircraft and to ground stations.

ADS-B Technologies has partnered with Globalstar, Inc. (NASDAQ: GSAT), a world leader in satellite communications, to transmit the air traffic control data between the aircraft and its strategically placed satellite ground stations around the world. "We definitely prefer Globalstar's relatively simple and straightforward 'bent pipe' architecture for a safety centric business like air traffic surveillance," commented Mike Melum, ADS-B Technologies chief scientist. "There are fewer potential points of failure and, so far, we see no technical barrier to tracking more than 3,000 aircraft in a roughly 1,000-mile diameter footprint from each Globalstar satellite. Since all of the brains of the system remain on the ground rather than on satellites in space, maintenance, expansion and future modifications are going to be much easier and more economical to accomplish."

ALAS is designed to be a simple, economical and easily installed aftermarket enhancement to virtually any 1090 MHz or 978 MHz ADS-B avionics source. User costs, some of which will be borne by the Air Navigation Service Providers and some by the aircraft operators themselves, are forecast to be significantly lower than the current rates associated with similar, yet less capable, services like ADS-C.

"With Globalstar's unique bent-pipe architecture, ground stations can be located close to air traffic control facilities in nations around the world," Nelson said. "This is not only safer and more efficient, but a nation's ability to land its own ADS-B data within its own borders at a reasonable cost will encourage global harmonization and perhaps earlier worldwide adoption of ADS-B as a universal surveillance standard."

ALAS has been in development since 2009 and a fully certified version of the product is expected to be ready for market by mid 2014. Globalstar has already launched 18 of its 24 next generation low earth orbit (LEO) satellites and should be capable of covering most of the world's busiest air routes by 2015. Full worldwide coverage, including north polar could be possible by 2017.

Learn more by visiting http://www.ads-b.com.

MEDIA: For full press kit, including broadcast quality video and graphics, email a request to skip@adsb.com.

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CONTACT:
Robert Nelson
ADS-B Technologies
900 Merrill Field drive
Anchorage, AK 99501
PHONE. 907-258-2372
FAX. 907-258-2329
EMAIL: skip@adsb.com
http://www.ads-b.com

KEYWORDS: ADS-B, space based,Globalstar, nextgen, atc, air traffic control, Iridium, satellite, technology, aerospace, satellite technology

SOURCE: ADS-B Technologies

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