Finding and Exploring ADS-B data

Slide 1

Slide 1 text

Finding and exploring ADS-B data Nathan L. Walls All Things Open – Oct. 14, 2019

Slide 2

Slide 2 text

Data from the Cloud(s)

Slide 3

Slide 3 text

Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Broadcast

Slide 4

Slide 4 text

Finding and Exploring ADS-B Data • How I learned about ADS-B and became interested in it • What ADS-B does • What ADS-B looks like • Acquiring ADS-B data • Data and visualization possibilities

Slide 5

Slide 5 text

This is an exploration, not expertise

Slide 6

Slide 6 text

A high-level overview

Slide 7

Slide 7 text

How I became interested

Slide 8

Slide 8 text

No content

Slide 9

Slide 9 text

Accident Reconstruction

Slide 10

Slide 10 text

No content

Slide 11

Slide 11 text

What ADS-B does • ADS-B is divided into two services • Traﬃc (TIS-B) • Weather/Flight Information (FIS-B)

Slide 12

Slide 12 text

What ADS-B / FIS-B does • Provides in-ﬂight weather information • Airborne pilot reports (PIREPS) • Doppler Radar images (NEXRAD) • Signiﬁcant weather info (SIGMET) • Thunderstorms • Icing

Slide 13

Slide 13 text

Other FIS-B info • Notices to Airmen (NOTAMS) • Automated Terminal Information System (ATIS)

Slide 14

Slide 14 text

We’re going to focus on ADS-B Trafﬁc (TIS-B)

Slide 15

Slide 15 text

What ADS-B / TIS-B does • Old radar-based method: Radar-based interrogation of each aircraft’s transponder • New ADS-B-based method: Each aircraft reports on itself

Slide 16

Slide 16 text

ADS-B/TIS-B advantages • Decreased reporting time for position changes vs. radar • Higher positional fidelity to air traffic control, allowing for less space separation • Aircraft can see each other’s ADS-B data and present pilots with a representation of aircraft around them without air traffic control

Slide 17

Slide 17 text

ADS-B by example

Slide 18

Slide 18 text

What’s that plane?

Slide 19

Slide 19 text

ADSB Exchange

Slide 20

Slide 20 text

No content

Slide 21

Slide 21 text

No content

Slide 22

Slide 22 text

No content

Slide 23

Slide 23 text

FlightAware

Slide 24

Slide 24 text

Let’s look at some data

Slide 25

Slide 25 text

ADS-B / TIS-B is chatty ~15 sec of traﬃc

Slide 26

Slide 26 text

No content

Slide 27

Slide 27 text

No content

Slide 28

Slide 28 text

No content

Slide 29

Slide 29 text

What kind of data did Delta 176 send out?

Slide 30

Slide 30 text

Identiﬁcation and category info

Slide 31

Slide 31 text

Air-to-air surveillance info

Slide 32

Slide 32 text

An All Call reply

Slide 33

Slide 33 text

Velocity, track, altitude changes

Slide 34

Slide 34 text

Position

Slide 35

Slide 35 text

Emergency status

Slide 36

Slide 36 text

Wait? Planes send text formatted data?

Slide 37

Slide 37 text

No, they send hex data https://www.lll.lu/~edward/edward/adsb/DecodingADSBposition.html

Slide 38

Slide 38 text

Raw stream Over a few seconds

Slide 39

Slide 39 text

You can read parts

Slide 40

Slide 40 text

These are paired position reports

Slide 41

Slide 41 text

mode-s.org

Slide 42

Slide 42 text

No content

Slide 43

Slide 43 text

No content

Slide 44

Slide 44 text

No content

Slide 45

Slide 45 text

Acquiring ADS-B data • Data services/visualizations • ADS-B Exchange • FlightAware • Data • ADSBHub

Slide 46

Slide 46 text

Acquiring ADS-B data • Over the air, there are two ﬂavors • 1090 MHz (Shared with Mode-S transponders) • 978 MHz (Universal Access Transceiver)

Slide 47

Slide 47 text

USB-based SDR E.g. FlightAware stick and PiAware

Slide 48

Slide 48 text

USB-based SDR E.g. FlightAware stick and PiAware

Slide 49

Slide 49 text

Data processing with ADS-B After acquiring data, what are some things we could do with it?

Slide 50

Slide 50 text

Visualization ideas • Traﬃc by time-of-day • General Aviation • Cargo • Schedule passenger service domestic and international

Slide 51

Slide 51 text

Common ﬂight routes High and low Victor Airways and the ﬂights that travel on them

Slide 52

Slide 52 text

Flights you see everyday • Near an airport with scheduled service? • What ﬂights are consistent?

Slide 53

Slide 53 text

Unique aircraft over time Query airliners.net for photos

Slide 54

Slide 54 text

Altitude by aircraft type Scatter plot?

Slide 55

Slide 55 text

Flight path/terrain data

Slide 56

Slide 56 text

Hypothetical Data Pipeline • Acquire raw radio data • Ingestion into a Postgres time-series DB, with or without the radio metadata • Expand location data into PostGIS storage • Expand ICAO addresses into registration numbers, etc • Work with your language/framework of choice

Slide 57

Slide 57 text

Conclusions/Observations • There’s a lot of curiosity you can satisfy with ADSBExchange and FlightAware • “What’s that plane?” • You can go beyond those rich oﬀerings with your own data collection

Slide 58

Slide 58 text

All of this helps my curiosity and wonder

Slide 59

Slide 59 text

Data Sources • ADSBHub • http://www.adsbhub.org • ADS-B Exchange • https://www.adsbexchange.com/data/ • FlightAware’s Firehose • https://ﬂightaware.com/commercial/ﬁrehose/

Slide 60

Slide 60 text

Resources • FlightAware’s PiAware • https://ﬂightaware.com/adsb/piaware/build • ADS-B Exchange’s How to Feed • https://adsbexchange.com/how-to-feed/ • FAA info on ADS-B • https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/programs/adsb/ • Mode-S.org • https://mode-s.org

Slide 61

Slide 61 text

Credits • ADSBExchange • FlightAware • Mode-S.org • Wikipedia • www.lll.lu/~edward • National Transportation Safety Board