How do we avoid the next airport disaster like Newark? An expert says 6G could be the solution

Newark Liberty International Airport was once again plunged into chaos when radar screens went black on the morning of May 9. It follows a recent disruption in communications with air traffic controllers in Philadelphia, who handle flights in and out of Newark, that caused hundreds of delays and cancellations.

The recent technical outages in America’s air traffic control system have created a heated dialog around the state of U.S. air travel and provoked action from the Federal Aviation Administration.

On April 28, air traffic controllers in Philadelphia lost radar and communication contact with planes flying in and out of Newark for anywhere from 30 to 90 seconds. As a result, they could not track and communicate with pilots about their flight paths, takeoffs and landings. The chaos led to hundreds of flight delays and cancellations for travelers in Newark. The outage on May 9 also lasted for about 30 seconds.

The incidents in Newark are the result of several converging crises, including severe staffing shortages among air traffic controllers. However, as the FAA looks into what happened and how to address it, one issue has become glaringly clear: the aging technology at the heart of American air travel.

Building more resilient infrastructure and technology is the start of finding a fix, says Michele Polese, an assistant research professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northeastern University’s Institute for the Wireless Internet of Things. But really addressing these tech issues could require looking further into the future, namely 6G.

A more powerful form of wireless telecommunication, 6G is closer than you might think. Adapting cellular networks to become the next generation of “eyes in the sky” could be one potential way to future-proof air travel, Polese says.

“[There’s] a trend that’s basically looking at how we can use the cellular network, all the antennas and devices that we have deployed in, for example, AT&T or Verizon or whatever kind of network, to also do sensing to detect objects and their position and where they are,” Polese says. “Maybe this could be a technology that in five years could be used to complement the other kinds of radar systems at the airport.”

Importantly, using a cellular network would provide the kind of resiliency that is lacking in a lot of current air travel infrastructure and leads to incidents like what occurred in Newark.

“Definitely, you have more resiliency in a cellular network because you naturally have more bay stations, more antennas deployed around the area compared to having one radar, which needs to have a very, very high reliability,” Polese says.

Adding more redundancies –– more communication “paths” –– is the best short-term way to address these issues, he explains. This can look like adding more fiber cables to adding a wireless communication option that complements, but does not replace, the current system.

It’s an approach the FAA is already using in its response to the crippling incident at Newark.

The FAA announced it would be adding “three new, high-bandwidth telecommunications connections” between the New York station that handles radar data and Philadelphia, where air traffic controllers monitor arrivals and departures in Newark. It also will update old copper telecommunication wires to fiber-optic cables to allow for “greater bandwidth and speed,” the FAA stated.

Building resiliency into a system is not a simple process, Polese says. There is a tradeoff that has to be weighed between relying on a single well-built, reliable system or multiple, less reliable systems that provide redundancies in case something goes wrong. But it’s an important shift that avoids an incident like the one in Newark or the next one that could be even worse.

“In case one goes down, then you still have other potential ways to reach the remote system,” Polese says. “This needs to be done end to end, not only in portions of the network, because … when you get to a point where you have a single piece of wiring that breaks, that basically brings your system down.”

This story is republished courtesy of Northeastern Global News news.northeastern.edu.