A Complex Network-Based Airspace Association Network Model and Its Characteristic Analysis

Abstract

As airspace congestion becomes more and more serious, it not only affects the efficiency and quality of aviation activities, but also poses a greater safety hazard. For in-depth exploration of the airspace network, a new airspace association network that differs from the traditional aviation approach of organizing the airspace into a network of sectors based on aircraft traffic flow is proposed. By judging the relationship between the size and location of the airspace and other properties, the establishment of an association network provides new ideas for airspace conflict detection and other aerial tasks. The three key factors of airspace use conflict were extracted and quantified, then the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used to assign weights to basic symmetric operators corresponding to three factors to calculate the final airspace correction degree, which reveals the magnitude of correlation degree between the airspace caused by the combined action of the above three factors. Finally, an airspace association network model was established according to the association degree, using basic symmetric operators to explore the general symmetry and network characteristics in real-world airspace association networks, and the feature indices, such as degree, strength, average correlation, clustering coefficient, and structure information entropy of the network, are proposed. The results show that the nodes with higher node degree and node association strength are often key nodes in the network, and the areas with higher average association degree and clustering coefficient are often more prone to airspace conflicts. At the same time, it was also verified that the safety distance between airspace has the greatest impact on the characteristics of the airspace association network.