London City Airport
Airport Overview
London City Airport, situated close to the Canary Wharf financial centre, handled over 5 million passengers in 2019. It has become the first major international airport in the world to be fully controlled by a remote digital air traffic control tower, with air traffic controllers based 115km away at NATS' Control Centre in Swanwick, UK.
NATS specified PAMS for alarm management as part of the £350M redevelopment of the airport and implementation of the Digital Tower, citing its proven reliable service in major UK airports. PAMS is crucial to the safe running of Remote Towers through instantaneous notification, distribution and management of ground-based system alarms to both VCR and ATE.
PAMS technology enables the remote monitoring of multiple locations over any distance — meaning it can be used for main or contingency towers, remote digital towers for single airports like LCY, or for monitoring multiple airports from a central or distributed location.
Inputs & Connectivity
PAMS sits at the heart of the implementation, monitoring the status of everything from radios and ILS to the fibre network infrastructure. In the event of an issue, reporting through PAMS Workstations and optional beacons is expanded to include the Saab Digital Tower system.
Local Digital Inputs
- VCS & EVCS
- Recorders
- ILS, DME, NDB
- IRVR, SAMOS & UPS
Remote Digital Inputs
- DT Mast Voltages
- UPS's & Data Room
- Compressors
- Radio VHF/UHF
Relay Outputs
- SAAB Digital Tower System (SDATS)
SNMP Inputs
- OTN Nav Mux
- SAMOS Gateway
Infrastructure & Implementation
PAMS Server & Site Architecture
A PAMS Server is located in the Equipment Room at NATS Swanwick. This includes digital input channels for local closed contact alarm inputs and digital output channels for closed contact alarm outputs to Saab's SDATS. The two sites are connected by a private superfast secure fibre network, with the PAMS server connecting to two remote locations at LCY for closed contact or switched-to-earth alarm inputs.
Workstations & Displays
PAMS Workstations are small-format, fanless PCs which connect through a standard Ethernet LAN connection back to the main PAMS server — requiring less space in equipment room racks and no need for dedicated LAN cabling for KVM Extenders in ATC. PAMS Workstations are located in the Control Centre at Swanwick and the CTB Equipment Room at London City. Interactions for ATE are through a local touchscreen display, which in some cases is re-located to a more convenient position using KVM Extenders and point-to-point LAN cable.
Status & Event Recording
The alarm status of each item of equipment is represented on displays by interactive buttons, with colour and flashing indicating current status — covering operational, warning, alarm, degraded, reverted and other states. PAMS provides instantaneous notification and all changes in state are recorded and timestamped to the nearest millisecond. The PAMS technology was delivered with comprehensive documentation, extended soak testing, a witnessed FAT (and internal pre-FAT), SAT attendance, subsequent training and ongoing support.
System Features
The latest version of PAMS includes a comprehensive set of features. In the case of SDATS, rules are applied to handle alarm groupings, maintenance mode, out-of-service alarms and what is transmitted onward from PAMS.
Key Benefits
World First
PAMS enabled the world's first major international airport to be fully controlled by a remote digital ATC tower.
Central Visibility
Engineering requirements centrally managed with visibility both locally and remotely for ATE and ATC.
Instantaneous Notification
All alarm state changes recorded and timestamped to the millisecond, delivered instantly across sites.
Multi-Site Scalability
PAMS technology enables monitoring of multiple airports from a single central or distributed location.
Increased Capacity
Controllers benefit from increased information on digital window screens, maximising air traffic capacity.
Proven Reliability
Specified by NATS due to PAMS' proven and reliable service across major UK airports.
Cost Savings
PAMS technology enables the safe running of Remote Digital Towers, which offer significant cost benefits compared to conventional air traffic control towers:
- No need to build and maintain control tower buildings and facilities at local airports
- Building and operational costs of a remote tower are considerably lower compared to a traditional tower
- More efficient use of human resources (ATCOs and AFISOs), especially by serving multiple airports with medium to low traffic from a centralised location
- Reduced need to establish and maintain ATM systems locally at airports — by using data communications networks, several technical systems can be centralised with considerable cost savings
- Over 75% of regional airports with fewer than 1 million passengers a year are making a loss — these costs can be shared with significant savings
- Greater potential to serve flights scheduled outside core opening hours, or non-scheduled traffic such as ambulance flights and search-and-rescue helicopters during night time when smaller airports would normally be closed