Superior Airport Safety with Enhanced SMR (eSMR) from Terma

First customer on eSMR

Terma is pleased with the market reception of the company’s new add-on. “Enhanced SMR is perhaps the most revolutionary development within the primary ground surveillance for many years, and it is addressing the all-important surveillance transition challenge for final approach,” tells Jesper Fammé, Sales Manager with Terma. “We already have airports implementing our system because of the support that eSMR adds for interception of descending aircraft while still providing an additional level of awareness to the ATM/ATC systems,” he concludes.

eSMR - ILS interception out to 10,000 m

For the past +20 years, the traditional ground movement radar in airports has been the primary sensor providing surveillance input for Advanced Surface Movement Guidance and Control Systems (ASMGCS) with reference to i.e. the EUROCAE ED-116.

With the introduction of eSMR, the new add-on from Terma to our well-known SMR application, it now supports ILS interception of descending aircraft at parallel runways out to 10,000 m on the final approach.

eSMR enables both detection and tracking of descending aircraft as well as non-transponder low-level unidentified flying objects around the airport.

Essentially, it is a 2-in-1 solution not compromising the 60 RPM of an SMR, and with detection and classification of various moving targets. Moreover, eSMR will help the ATC overcome the surveillance transition challenge for final approach.

Overcoming the challenge

A well-known challenge of a modern airport is the primary and secondary radars not providing coverage below 2-300 meters and only with an update rate of 4 sec. These radars might also have a limited view of the descending aircraft due to buildings or blind zones. A correlation in the A-SMGCS between the secondary radar and the SMR now makes it possible to transfer the label automatically and earlier.

The eSMR will increase the instrumented range from typically 3-4.000m to 10.000m and provide primary detection >60 sec prior to touchdown in the 3-degree glide path angle.