The foundation of our technology leadership
A solid technological basis and high capacity for innovation are the drivers of research & development at Frequentis. The company is widely recognised as an innovation leader in the markets it serves.
Technological competence paired with solid domain know-how ensures that systems and solutions delivered to customers remain at the highest technical level; at the same time, actively pushing development and standardisation forward. Participation in international research projects allows the company to actively create an innovative future.
Research activities are a cornerstone of technology leadership. Corporate initiatives are driven by a customer need or a promising technological concept. Thus, research projects are either a joint undertaking with a customer or carried out within the framework of an international research programme that also involves customers. This means every research project is guided by an approved business case and the overarching goal is to set international standards in relevant fields. Research efforts always benefit from diversity, which is why a high value is placed on the exchange of ideas and insights with customers and cooperation with universities, research institutions and other industry partners. These collaborations enable the company to anticipate technological challenges and identify the requirements that next generation systems need to address. Demonstrations and developments that provide proof of concept allow for early validation of new technological approaches and operational concepts.
Frequentis’ SESAR engagement is a good example that has received high appreciation in Europe and beyond. SESAR (Single European Sky ATM Research) aims to improve Air Traffic Management performance by modernising and harmonising ATM systems through the definition, development, validation and deployment of innovative technological and operational ATM solutions. SESAR 1 has successfully concluded. Frequentis is leading the consortium “Frequentis SESAR Partners” and now fully commits itself to SESAR 2020, the continuation of this European research initiative, with even higher emphasis on product-orientated and solution-orientated research.
With all technological improvements and changes, Frequentis retains a high focus on the humans that use the company’s products and their specific working environment. An integrated display of all relevant information offers important support for the controller, operations manager, officer-in-command or other decision makers when they have to cope with stressful working conditions. A dedicated user interface design process helps operators to complete high-pressure and safety-critical tasks and to secure efficiency in the control room processes. Key for the success of these research activities is the close cooperation between research teams and the product management organisations within the Frequentis business units. With the goal to define our product portfolio for the future, product development naturally needs to collaborate closely with research mainly targeting the medium and long-term perspective.
Over the last years, customers have faced various challenges resulting from rapid developments in IT technology, such as virtualisation of solutions, deployment in cloud environments, new operational concepts, and security threats. Frequentis’ products tackle these aspects through adaptations in new releases with agile development cycles.
Frequentis Control Room Consulting – serving a purpose
The ideal control room is a Joint Cognitive System that combines humans and machines in a balanced way to execute specific tasks. Our aim is to ensure that systems support their human operators in making safe decisions that support the mission goals of the control room.
Understanding is key! Every safety-critical control room has three pillars – surveillance, workflow support, and communications – which are our corner stones for advanced situational awareness, informed decision-making, and optimised workflow-driven communications. Rather than starting from a system-centric view, Frequentis works to understand each customer’s business processes and then follows lean management principles to map them to information streams and enhance them. Frequentis uses evidence-based tools to prove that systems are fit for purpose and provide the best possible support for processes. All results can be benchmarked against best in class.
Maximised productivity, pleased users, safe technology
Inspired by kaizen principles from manufacturing, Frequentis Control Room Consulting targets zero defects and higher productivity for customers – meaning safe and efficient working practices. All projects are delivered using the Frequentis aware® toolbox, which is a set of methods, standards, and tools designed to ensure high user involvement throughout the design and development of all systems. Based on a user-centric process as described in ISO 9241, the aware toolbox also covers the entire transition phase to de-risk users´ commissioning.
Control Room Consulting – service portfolio
Frequentis Control Room Consulting offers a comprehensive service portfolio including interaction design, control room design, and prototyping to visualise the requirements. Our human- and business-centric approach reduces project risk and costs by supporting users throughout the transition to new systems and working practices.
Learn more about Control Room Consulting on YouTube.
SESAR – participating in one of the biggest global technology ATM programmes
By the end of 2016, SESAR 1 delivered more than 60 technological and operational solutions, thus contributing to an enhanced European ATM infrastructure. As a Member of the SJU, Frequentis actively participated in more than 30 projects. Important achievements of SESAR 1 include prototype work for remote tower, iCWP evaluation and demonstrations, data models for AIM, MET and Airport, and a significant development in the field of D-NOTAM.
The goal towards a Single European Sky is now further pursued within the programme SESAR 2020. Together with the Hungarian ANSP, HungaroControl, and the French IT service provider, Atos, Frequentis works on a total of 10 projects (WAVE 1) as part of the consortium "Frequentis SESAR Partners (FSP)". The FSP consortium sets to enhance cross-industry innovation through integrating different stakeholders in the ATM value chain. In partnership and cooperation with the many other SESAR 2020 members we address the following key topics: remote virtual towers, virtual centres, voice and data communications including SWIM, future communications infrastructure (FCI) and information management.
We see major trends in the areas of improved automation, new algorithms, virtualisation of ATC services as well as improving regional and global interoperability. The FSP consortium’s key development targets comprise:
Above all, Frequentis pursues a joint approach to various validations with consortium and SESAR partners.
We set standards!
Standardisation is an important means of innovation. First, because it provides structured methods and reliable data that save time in the innovation process, and second, because it makes it easier to disseminate ground-breaking ideas and knowledge about leading edge techniques. Thus, standardisation is also indispensable for building customer trust in products, services and systems.
With its capacity for innovation and technical expertise, Frequentis seeks to actively participate in the development of standards and regulatory measures. The company has always placed special emphasis on developing its expertise in setting standards in safety-critical markets. However, “setting standards” is not just seen as a powerful driver in development; it gives customers the security of knowing that they are investing in a future-oriented system.
Our experts are engaged in standardisation bodies covering all industries in which the company operates. Just to mention a few examples:
Standards bring safe investments for our customers!
Cyber security for safety critical services and vital infrastructures
Providers of safety critical services are facing severe challenges when they want to implement measures to defend themselves against the rapidly growing IT security threats. There are several reasons for that:
The demand for solutions to integrate security concepts into safety defines one of the research focus of Frequentis together with its end-user partners, research partners and industry partners. It comprises: integrated safety & security system architectures and design patterns, hardware based solutions for the separation of security zones, encryption of critical real-time media streams (such as voice, video, sensor data) and hardening of system components.
In addition to the providers of safety relevant services, organisations responsible for national cyber crisis management and cyber defence are getting new, overarching responsibilities on a national level by new legal provisions. They are responsible for defending the vital infrastructures and for managing crisis situations in case of an attack with severe consequences.
As control room vendor for many different domains in the physical world, Frequentis is transforming its experience now into the cyber space. Together with selected customers, specialised research and industry partners, the company focus is on research of solutions for national cyber crisis management and defence, covering overarching situational awareness, decision support and incident management for the protection of vital infrastructures. With that agenda we contribute to the EU H2020 Project SATIE that focuses on cyber security and physical security at airports.
The key idea of crisis and disaster management research is to meet the challenge of supporting customers in those situations, where standard business procedures fail.
Imagine the following scenarios:
It is situations like these which demand leadership capabilities at an extremely high level. Leadership is a human quality – and it can be supported by technology. So, which concrete capabilities are behind leadership in such demanding situations? And how can technology support it?
Technology building blocks support humans to bring their capabilities to full effect in complex and demanding situations of crisis. Examples of such technology building blocks are: information sharing infrastructures for professional, safety-critical services; situational awareness solutions; decision support systems; communications interoperability solutions. They define the research goals for the research projects in this area. All of them are collaborative endeavours: We are working together with professional end-users and research partners.
Drone Management
Drones are proliferating throughout the world’s airspace, making them impossible to ignore. As their numbers rise, the importance of finding a way for them to safely coexist with manned aircraft is growing increasingly urgent. To ensure the current high level of flight safety and security, the aviation stakeholders are taking steps to implement a Flight Information Management System (FIMS) to integrate the management of drones or referred as UTM (Unmanned Traffic Management) with ATM (Air Traffic Management).
MosaiX SWIM is a digital data exchange platform, which support data validation, data mediation between legacy and SWIM data models (AIXM, FIXM, IWXXM), data fusion between the different information domains (i.e. flight plans and surveillance data), and up to date display of all information (airspace, flight plans weather, surveillance). It brings together all the stakeholders in the ecosystem with a focus on data accuracy, integrity, consistency, and timeliness, all while remaining a future-proof and open platform with a very low vendor lock-in.
Drone Detection, Incident Handling and Counter UAV
The rapidly growing number of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) creates new challenges for the safety of air traffic. Uncooperative UAVs (i.e. rogue drones) cause major disruption at airports and airbases, they are used to smuggle goods across borders or to spy on governmental authorities. They can pose a threat to critical infrastructure, events, and sovereignty of countries. Recent incidents have spotlighted the urgent need for a comprehensive solution to deal with this threat.
The Frequentis drone detection solution creates an effective response to the threat and differentiates to other solutions in the market by providing full situational awareness, minimising resolution time, and enabling cross-agency collaboration. The solution is based on MosaiX SWIM digital data platform and Frequentis` incident and crisis management system (ICM).
MosaiX SWIM improves interoperability with existing infrastructures and allows to create a comprehensive situational picture by fusing all available data feeds in one digital data platform: cooperative drones, uncooperative drones (including visual observations), air traffic, and blue forces. The cross-agency incident management system (ICM) improves collaboration by sharing the situational picture with all stakeholders together with managing communications and incidents across hierarchies, operators, and locations.
The solution is an open framework which supports, integrates, and scales with sensor and effector systems available on the market.
For further information, please also have a look at our Solution Brief:
