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SkyRack ATC - System Monitoring and Control - Description

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SkyRack ATC provides the important use cases for ATSEP qualification in line with EASA's Easy Access Rules for ATM-ANS (Regulation (EU) 2017/373) ATSEP.BAP.SMC.

This infrastructure solution comes as hardware. Depending on the destination it will be shipped disassembled and assembled at customer site, or it will be shipped readily installed right away.

The servers include pre-installed software (depending on the destination, the software will be installed in the destination country.

SkyRack ATC is a pedagogically enhanced server cabinet with facilities, data processing infrastructure, networks and applications similar to those used in ATC. If a complete ATM system is required, please use our fully operational ATM system and tower simulator. SkyRadar provides the SkyRack ATC as infrastructure for monitoring and control exercises with SkySMC, the pedagogical, but fully operating monitoring and control solution. SkyRack is not a stand-alone infrastructure. SkySMC can connect concurrently to Surveillance Infrastructure like the NextGen 8 GHz Radar, to our fully operational ATM system, to our virtual infrastructure or to any external system with standardized Object Identifier Codes (by ITU or/and ISO).

The system connects to the pedagogically enhanced monitoring environment SkySMC and includes a virtualized / simulated ATC training architecture. It connects to the various training laboratories by SkyRadar. The monitoring system is by default connected to special training infrastructure and optionally to an environment for remote monitoring experiments. It is accessible from all computers in the available laboratories including radar labs, electrical installations, electro-mechanics, electronics. 

Monitoring-Teacher-Manual-Control-Panel
Image above: The teacher's manual Control Panel at the read side of the Cabinet.

POSSIBLE USE CASES & EXERCISES 

Facilities

  • Power,
  • UPS and battery,
  • Environmental (heating,
    cooling),
  • Fire and security

DP

  • Pedagogical FDPS
  • Data communications

System Configuration

  • Equipment of channel switching, software-based or physical switching
  • Parameter settings

Monitoring Functions

  • Status
  • Parameters

Control Functions

  • Switching
  • Parametrization
  • Set configurations

Server Cabinet with Rack

The cabinet can be accessed from 2 sides.

The front side is what is visible to the trainee. It is a typical ATC server arrangement. Trainees need to make use of the system control and monitoring software SkySMC to detect errors or system degradations before applying the right recovery strategy.

The rear side shows the manual hardware-based control panel. The teacher can manually enforce system degradations or errors.  He or she can e.g., switch off certain network connections, or hardware components by interrupting the power supply.

19" Rackmount Touchscreen and Socket Rack

SkyRack includes a 19" Touch-Panel, accessible from the front side.

Screen characteristics:

1280x1024 Pixels
16,7 Mio colors
250cd/m2
Contrast: 1000:1

Display size: 19"
Resolution: 1280x1024 (5:4)
Width: 483mm
Depth: 51mm
Height: 355mm

Below the Touchpanel, there is a socket rack allowing to measure (simulated) radar parameters with oscilloscope and multimeter.

2 Server Modules

The server rack is equipped by default with 2 server modules. The modules contain databases and applications like the small pedagogical FDPS. The various applications communicate with eachother through the physical network. The applications provide typical ATC constellations in a nutshell.

Software Applications & Databases

The software applications include e.g.,

  • NGINX - a commonly used is a web server that can also be used as a reverse proxy, load balancer, mail proxy and HTTP cache. The ATC environment includes a sample websites, its IP is 172.17.02.
    We can for instance refresh the website. Consequently the requests per second in the Nginx server will increase
  • SNMP server - SNMP is widely used in network management for network monitoring. SNMP exposes management data in the form of variables on the managed systems organized in a management information base (MIB) which describe the system status and configuration. These variables can then be remotely queried (and, in some circumstances, manipulated) by managing applications. In the example it is a pure SNMP server. IP 172.17.03
  • Pedagogical Flight Data Processing System (server) - it is a web service on IP 172.17.04. This pedagogical FDPS provides simulated data on arriving and departing flights. The events happen faster than in reality in order to see changes faster. 
  • Distributed Control System (DCS) für fire monitoring. The server includes an DCS system for fire monitoring in gas or kerosine. The system can be connected to real Airport Rescue and Firefighting installations for training purposes or real ARFF training aircraft. Relevant monitoring data is passed to SkySMC.

Network Routerboard

The network routerboard consists of of a4-Port Ethernet Line Breaker with relay controlled Ethernet ports and integrated I/O module.  It is a is a cybersecurity system for industrial networks that can physically disconnect Ethernet connections. It features relay-controlled 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports, each of which can be turned on and off via a toggle switch on the device as well as remotely. Remote control is based on standardized communication protocols.
The teacher can cause network errors and degradation manually though physical switching or remotely through the teacher panel in the SkySMC.

Power Strip

The switchable power strip allows to manually switch on and off Servers and Facilities.
The teacher can cause network errors and degradation manually though physical switching or remotely through the teacher panel in the SkySMC.

2 UPSs

The system is equipped with 2 Uninterrupted Power Supplies (min 3x750 W). Through SNMP, The SkySMC System Monitoring and Control software can monitor the USPs. 

From teacher panel, the teacher can switch on and off the USPs.

Fan with Thermostat

The system includes a Fan with Thermostat.

Fire Detector (Optional)

An important Facility in the ATC landscape is fire detection and monitoring. 

The server cabinet can be extended by a fire detector with SNMP communication to be monitored by SkySMC.

 

Expandable System

The monitoring environment is able to include a variety of different labs, including the NextGen radars, the ATC Radar and Tower Simulator, or various electronical and electro-mechanical labs.

Prerequisites