For many, multilateration (sometimes abbreviated Mlat) is one of those vague ATC terms that is always hard to define. Put simply, it is how a spread-out group of small, unmanned, ground-based “listening posts” continuously monitors aircraft transponder signals, and then collectively triangulates them to derive individual aircraft positions. Following that, they send those positions plus their idents, altitudes and other data to ATC. It’s a pretty straightforward concept. Consequently, in the early 1990s, airport ground controllers at Dallas/Fort Worth, Atlanta, Heathrow, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and elsewhere acquired multilateration systems from Sensis of Syracuse, N.Y., to monitor surface traffic movements.
Today, that technology has expanded into so many diverse applications that it can be truly called ATC’s Swiss army knife. With its faster-than-radar one-second position update rate, its GPS-like accuracy, its lower cost and its extraordinary flexibility, multilateration has become an essential element in a growing number of U.S. and international ATC and airport systems as we move into the coming age of air traffic management.
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