Saudi Arabia's General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) has selected surface and terminal area surveillance systems built by Sensis Corp for the King Fahad and King Abdulaziz International airports.

Included in the contract, announced today, are Sensis' advanced surface movement guidance and control systems (A-SMGCS) that will be used by air traffic controllers to view aircraft and vehicles on the ground, and wide-area multilateration systems (WAM) which will provide aircraft position data out to 50nm (93km) from the airports.

Additionally both airports will use vehicle-mounted Sensis' VeeLo NextGen locator units to track and identify vehicles on the airport surface.

A-SMGCS fuses data from Sensis-built multilateration, X-band radar and VeeLo vehicle locator units to compute aircraft and vehicle locations and provide detection and alerting for potential conflicts.

"The GACA has taken a novel approach by integrating and simultaneously deploying A-SMGCS and WAM applications," says Sensis air traffic systems vice-president and general manager, Tony Lo Brutto.

"This is a very cost-effective solution that will provide air traffic controllers with seamless, highly accurate surveillance from the surface to the terminal area around both airports."

Source: Air Transport Intelligence news