Exploring Dynamic Characteristics of Multi-State Air Traffic Flow: A Time Series Approach

Abstract

Understanding the dynamics of air traffic flow is important to achieving advanced air traffic management. This work explores the dynamic evolution and fluctuation characteristics of multistate air traffic time series from a complex network perspective, which is essential for understanding the nature of an air traffic system. With the application of the fundamental diagram (FD), we discover that the relative velocity, flight distance and trajectory similarity are the three key variables for interpreting the arrival traffic flow states of the Xiamen Gaoqi International Airport. According to these three variables, time series are classified into four traffic states based on the K-means algorithm: free flow (FF), transitional flow (TF), slightly congested flow (SCF) and heavily congested flow (HCF). The extracted time series in different states are converted into complex networks using the visibility graph method. We analyze and compare the statistical features of the networks in the four states in terms of indexes, such as the degree distribution and network structure. The results indicate that the complex network characteristics can be used to distinguish air traffic states from the original traffic flow. Our work may be helpful for scholars and engineers to better understand the intrinsic nature of air traffic and for the development of intelligent assistant decision-making systems for air traffic management. INDEX TERMS Air traffic flow, complex network, fundamental diagram, visibility graph, traffic states.