A light-propagation model for aircraft trajectory planning

Predicted air tra c growth is expected to double the number of ights over the next 20 years. If current means of air tra c control are maintained, airspace capacity will reach its limits. The need for increasing airspace capacity motivates improved aircraft trajectory planning in 4D (space+time). In order to generate sets of con ict-free 4D trajectories, we introduce a new nature-inspired algorithm: the light propagation algorithm (LPA). This algorithm is a wavefront propagation method that yields approximate geodesic solutions (minimal-intime solutions) for the path planning problem, in the particular case of air-tra c congestion. In simulations, LPA yields encouraging results on real-world tra c over France while satisfying the speci c constraints in air-tra c management.