Autonomous Air Traffic Control for Non-Towered Airports

Half of all reported near mid-air collisions involve at least one general aviation aircraft. More than half of NTSB reports of mid-air collisions occur in the vicinity or in the traffic pattern of an airport, and a majority of them occur at non-towered airports. This paper proposes a concept for traffic collision prevention targeted for general aviation aircraft operating in the vicinity of non-towered airports. We envision an autonomous air traffic control system as a non-intrusive, ground based system with no additional requirements to participating aircraft except for radio communication. We outline how such a system can be modeled and solved as a Markov decision process and present simulation results for aircraft in the traffic pattern.