Receding horizon control for free-flight path optimisation

This paper presents a Receding Horizon Control (RHC) algorithm to the problem of on-line flight path optimization for aircraft in a Free Flight (FF) environment. The motivation to introduce the concept of RHC is to improve the robust performance of solutions in a dynamic and uncertain environment, and also to satisfy the restrictive time limit to the real-time optimization of this complicated air traffic control problem. Firstly, the mathematical model for the on-line FF path optimization problem is set up and discussed. Then, the proposed RHC algorithm is described in details. Simulation results illustrate that the new algorithm is very efficient and promising for practical applications. While achieving almost the same optimal solution as an existing algorithm in the absence of environmental uncertainties, it works better in a dynamic and uncertain environment. In either case, the online computational time of the proposed RHC algorithm is only a fraction of that of the existing algorithm.