STEM Poster

1
FAA PlotASR Radar SimulatorJason Snouffer,
Andrew Tasso, Gersh Zebovitz Department of
Computer Science, Rowan UniversityEmail
snouff91, tassoa68, zebovi40_at_students.rowan.edu
Faculty Advisor Dr. Adrian Rusu
Abstract Our project, the PlotASR 9 Radar
Simulator is an updated version of the PlotASR
software currently in use by the Federal Aviation
Administration in Atlantic City, NJ. Our version
of the software, known as JPlotASR, is a tool to
plot and view stored aircraft position data
received from ASR-9 Surveillance Radars. There is
definitely a need for our updated software, the
original radar simulator was written in the 1980s
and its functionality is now very limited. Our
version will offer better functionality and
portability. Our software does not display
real-time radar data, but rather radar data that
has been previously received and stored. The
software reads in authentic flight information
stored in a HEX encoded file and displays the
flight data in a radar-like view. This is useful
to the FAA, because it allows for reviewing of
received radar data as it was originally
displayed on the real-time radar screen, at any
time. The project was implemented entirely in
Java, using JoGL for all graphical rendering.
In addition to graphically plotting the received
radar data, the program also displays text-based
information based on the received message data.
The image below is a screenshot of what the data
looks like when display textually, the text data
is equivalent to what is plotted on the radar
screen. Included within the text-based data is
aircraft altitude, range, azimuth, beacon
authenticity as well as weather data.
We implemented the radar simulator software
entirely in Java using the OpenGL library for the
actual plotting. Java is not usually used to
implement real-time projects involving aircraft
data because of Javas speed and overhead.
However, Java is an excellent choice for
implementing a radar simulator since the data is
not real-time and the software response time is
not critical. Java, along with the OpenGL
libraries, is an excellent tool for producing
graphical displays and outputting them to a
windowed environment. Also, Java is a very
portable language, our software can be quickly
installed and run on virtually any operating
system or machine, as long as Java is installed.
Screenshot Data View
Our software is actually an upgrade from an older
version that is in current use by the FAA. Our
software is a significant improvement over the
older version. The older version was written in a
now obsolete language and could only run in DOS,
limiting it to Windows machines. Our new version
is written in Java, so it is highly modifiable
and maintainable, as well as portable to any
operating system.
The message data is stored in a HEX encoded file.
Our software reads in this file, decodes it into
text and then builds message objects based on the
files data. Each message object contains
instructions on how to plot it to the radar
screen as well as all information to printed to
the text display.
Screenshot of Simulator