Analyzing the multilevel structure of the European airport network

The multilayered structure of the European airport network (EAN), composed of con-nections and flights between European cities, is analyzed through the k-core decomposition of the connections network. This decomposition allows to identify the core, bridge and periphery lay-ers of the EAN. The core layer includes the best-connected cities, which include important business air traffic destinations. The periphery layer includes cities with lesser connections, which serve low populated areas where air travel is an economic alternative. The remaining cities form the bridge of the EAN, including important leisure travel origins and destinations. The multilayered structure of the EAN affects network robustness, as the EAN is more robust to isolation of nodes of the core, than to the isolation of a combination of core and bridge nodes.     

Heuristics of node selection criteria to assess robustness of world airport network

The world airport network (WAN) is one of the networked infrastructures that shape today's economic and social activity,so its resilience against incidents affecting the WAN is an important problem.In this paper,the robustness of air route networks is extended by defining and testing several heuristics to define selection criteria to detect the critical nodes of the WAN.In addition to heuristics based on genetic algorithms and simulated annealing,custom heuristics based on node damage and node betweenness are defined.The most effective heuristic is a multiattack heuristic combining both custom heuristics.Results obtained are of importance not only for advance in the understanding of the structure of complex networks,but also for critical node detection.     

Robustness analysis metrics for worldwide airport network: A comprehensive study

Robustness of transportation networks is one of the major challenges of the 21st century. This paper investigates the resilience of global air transportation from a complex network point of view, with focus on attacking strategies in the airport network, i.e., to remove airports from the sys-tem and see what could affect the air traffic system from a passenger's perspective. Specifically, we identify commonalities and differences between several robustness measures and attacking strate-gies, proposing a novel notion of functional robustness: unaffected passengers with rerouting. We apply twelve attacking strategies to the worldwide airport network with three weights, and eval-uate three robustness measures. We find that degree and Bonacich based attacks harm passenger weighted network most. Our evaluation is geared toward a unified view on air transportation net-work attack and serves as a foundation on how to develop effective mitigation strategies.     

Vulnerability analysis of the Chinese coupled aviation and high-speed railway network

The integrated aviation and High-Speed Railway (HSR) transportation system plays a vital role for today’s inter-city transportation services. However, an increasing number of unexpected disruptions (such as operation failures, natural disasters, or intentional attacks) pose a considerable threat to the normal operation of the system, especially on ground transfer, leading to the extensive research on its vulnerability. Previous approaches mainly focus on interruptions within a single transportation mode, neglecting the role of ground transfer which serves as a coupled connection between aviation and High-Speed Railway. This paper proposes a network-based framework for evaluating the vulnerability of the Chinese Coupled Aviation and High-Speed Railway (CAHSR) network from the viewpoint of ground transfer interruption. Taking the end-to-end travel time and passenger flow information into consideration as an evaluation measure and analyzing from the perspective of urban agglomerations, an adaptive method is developed to identify the critical cities and further investigate their failure impacts on the geographic distribution of vulnerability. In addition, the proposed model explores variations of vulnerability under different failure time intervals. Based on the empirical study, some major conclusions are highlighted as follows: (A) Only a few cities show significant impacts on the network’s vulnerability when ground transfer interruptions occurred. (B) The distribution of vulnerability is not proportional to the distance between failure city and influenced city. (C) The vulnerability is more serious in the morning and evening when the ground transfer is disconnected. Our findings may provide new insights for maintenance and optimization of the CAHSR network and other real-world transportation networks.     

Network analysis of Chinese air transport delay propagation

The Chinese air transport system has witnessed an important evolution in the last dec-ade, with a strong increase in the number of flights operated and a consequent reduction of their punctuality. In this contribution, we propose modelling the process of delay propagation by using complex networks, in which nodes are associated to airports, and links between pairs of them are assigned when a delay propagation is detected. Delay time series are analysed through the well-known Granger Causality, which allows detecting if one time series is causing the dynamics observed in a second one. Results indicate that delays are mostly propagated from small and regio-nal airports, and through flights operated by turbo-prop aircraft. These insights can be used to design strategies for delay propagation dampening, as for instance by including small airports into the system's Collaborative Decision Making.     

Vulnerability analysis for airport networks based on fuzzy soft sets: From the structural and functional perspective

Recently,much attention has been paid to the reliability and vulnerability of critical infrastructure.In air traffic systems,the vulnerability analysis for airport networks can be used to guide air traffic administrations in their prioritization of the maintenance and repair of airports,as well as to avoid unnecessary disturbances in the planning of flight schedules.In this paper,the evaluation methods of airport importance and network efficiency are established.Firstly,the evaluation indices of airport importance are proposed from both the topological and functional perspectives.The topological characteristics come from the structure of airport network and the functional features stem from the traffic flow distribution taking place inside the network.Secondly,an integrated evaluation method based on fuzzy soft set theory is proposed to identify the key airports,which can fuse together importance indices over different time intervals.Thirdly,an airport network efficiency method is established for the purpose of assessing the accuracy of the evaluation method.Finally,empirical studies using real traffic data of US and China’s airport networks show that the evaluation method proposed in this paper is the most accurate.The vulnerability of US and China’s airport networks is compared.The similarities and differences between airport geography distribution and airport importance distribution are discussed here and the dynamics of airport importance is studied as well.     

Evolution analysis of a UAV real-time operating system from a network perspective

With the flourishing development of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), the mission tasks of UAVs have become more and more complex. Consequently, a Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) that provides operating environments for various mission services on these UAVs has become crucial, which leads to the necessity of having a deep understanding of an RTOS. In this paper, an empirical study is conducted on FreeRTOS, a commonly used RTOS for UAVs, from a complex network perspective. A total of 85 releases of FreeRTOS, from V2.4.2 to V10.0.0, are modeled as directed networks, in which the nodes represent functions and the edges denote function calls. It is found that the size of the FreeRTOS network has grown almost linearly with the evolution of the versions, while its main core has evolved steadily. In addition, a k-core analysis-based metric is proposed to identify major functionality changes of FreeRTOS during its evolution. The result shows that the identified versions are consistent with the version change logs. Finally, it is found that the clustering coefficient of the Linux OS scheduler is larger than that of the FreeRTOS scheduler. In conclusion, the empirical results provide useful guidance for developers and users of UAV RTOSs.     

Dynamics of air transport networks: A review from a complex systems perspective

Air transport systems are highly dynamic at temporal scales from minutes to years. This dynamic behavior not only characterizes the evolution of the system but also affect the system's functioning. Understanding the evolutionary mechanisms is thus fundamental in order to better design optimal air transport networks that benefits companies, passengers and the environment. In this review, we briefly present and discuss the state-of-the-art on time-evolving air transport net-works. We distinguish the structural analysis of sequences of network snapshots, ideal for long-term network evolution (e.g. annual evolution), and temporal paths, preferred for short-term dynamics (e.g. hourly evolution). We emphasize that most previous research focused on the first modeling approach (i.e. long-term) whereas only a few studies look at high-resolution temporal paths. We conclude the review highlighting that much research remains to be done, both to apply already available methods and to develop new measures for temporal paths on air transport networks. In particular, we identify that the study of delays, network resilience and optimization of resources (aircraft and crew) are critical topics.     

Research of multi-path routing based on network coding in space information networks

A multi-path routing algorithm based on network coding is proposed for combating long propagation delay and high bit error rate of space information networks. On the basis of traditional multi-path routing, the algorithm uses a random linear network coding strategy to code data pack- ets. Code number is determined by the next hop link status and the number of current received packets sent by the upstream node together. The algorithm improves retransmission and cache mechanisms through using redundancy caused by network coding. Meanwhile, the algorithm also adopts the flow distribution strategy based on time delay to balance network load. Simulation results show that the proposed routing algorithm can effectively improve packet delivery rate, reduce packet delay, and enhance network performance.     

Performance improvement of licklider transmission protocol in complex deep space networks based on parameter optimization

A reasonable parameter configuration helps improve the data transmission performance of the Licklider Transmission Protocol (LTP). Previous research has focused mainly on parameter optimization for LTP in simplified scenarios with one to two hops or multihop scenarios with a custody mechanism of the Bundle Protocol (BP). However, the research results are not applicable to communications in Complex Deep Space Networks (CDSNs) without the custody mechanism of BP that are more suitable for deep space communications with LTP. In this paper, we propose a model of file delivery time for LTP in CDSNs. Based on the model, we propose a Parameter Optimization Design Algorithm for LTP (LTP-PODA) of configuring reasonable parameters for LTP. The results show that the accuracy of the proposed model is at least 6.47% higher than that of the previously established models based on simple scenarios, and the proposed model is more suitable for CDSNs. Moreover, the LTP parameters are optimized by the LTP-PODA algorithm to obtain an optimization plan. Configuring the optimization plan for LTP improves the protocol transmission performance by at least 18.77% compared with configuring the other parameter configuration plans.     

基于网络编码的空间DTN中CGR改进算法

随着空间通信技术的发展,卫星节点的增多,以及容延迟容中断通信需求的不断提高,空间DTN (DelayTolerant Network,容延迟网络)环境中各通信节点间的路由技术日益重要,相继出现了多种适用于DTN的路由技术.基于空间DTN的结构与特点,对CGR(Contact Graph Routing,接触图路由)算法以及基于编码的路由算法进行了分析比较,然后针对空间DTN中CGR算法的缺点和不足,研究提出了基于NC(Network Coding,网络编码)的空间DTN中的CGR改进算法(NC-CGR),并通过仿真实验平台对算法性能进行了分析评估.仿真结果表明,相比于CGR算法,NC-CGR算法在链路传输时延、传输包裹数目、中继缓存大小、链路丢包率等不同条件下的适应性方面均表现出较大优势,更适用于具有复杂拓扑、带宽受限、高动态特性的空间DTN环境.     

机场协同决策的应用历史与研究趋势综述

机场协同决策可以有效提升机场的运行效率,进而提升整个民航运输网络的运行效率。本文查阅整理了机场协同决策的相关标准、政策文件与研究论文,梳理了机场协同决策的发展历程以及国内外学界业界有关协同决策的研究及应用现状;分析讨论了机场协同决策未来的发展趋势与当前时期协同决策所面临的挑战;同时基于我国的实际情况,给出了一些机场协同决策的发展建议;总结了机场协同决策的理论与应用价值以及协同决策在我国面临的问题与挑战。本文研究可以为提升机场与整个航空交通网络的运行效率与经济效益提供理论支撑和依据。     

Study on the resolution of multi-aircraft flight conflicts based on an IDQN

With the rapid growth of flight flow, the workload of controllers is increasing daily, and handling flight conflicts is the main workload. Therefore, it is necessary to provide more efficient conflict resolution decision-making support for controllers. Due to the limitations of existing methods, they have not been widely used. In this paper, a Deep Reinforcement Learning(DRL) algorithm is proposed to resolve multi-aircraft flight conflict with high solving efficiency. First, the characteristics ...