The SESAR 3 JU has created an innovation pipeline through which promising ideas are explored and then moved out of the ‘lab’ into real operations. The pipeline consists of four distinct strands:

Exploratory Research

Explores new concepts beyond those identified in the European ATM Master Plan or emerging technologies and methods. Discover Exploratory research projects

Industrial Research and Validation

Assesses and validates technical and operational concepts in simulated and real operational environments. This process transforms concepts into SESAR Solutions. Discover Industrial research and validation projects

Digital Sky Demonstrators

Test SESAR Solutions on a much larger scale and in real operations. Discover current Large Scale Demonstrators

Fast-track innovation and uptake

Accelerates the development of high risk/high gain projects with the perspective of shortening the time to market for disruptive and highly innovative solutions. 

Research and innovation portfolio

To deliver the Digital European Sky, the SESAR 3 JU has designed a portfolio of research and innovation activities for delivering solutions across nine flagships:

Connected and automated ATM
The future ATM system will deliver hyper connectivity between all stakeholders (vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-infrastructure) via high bandwidth, low latency fixed and mobile networks. Highly automated systems with numerous actors will interact with each other seamlessly, making the system scalable and even safer than today.

Air-ground integration and autonomy
The progressive move towards autonomous flying enabled by self-piloting technologies requires a closer integration between vehicle and infrastructure capabilities so that the infrastructure can act as a digital twin of the aircraft.

Capacity-on-demand and dynamic airspace
Technology will enable the dynamic reconfiguration and the activation of cross-border capacity-on-demand services to maintain smooth traffic services at busy times.

U-space and urban air mobility
A digitally native traffic management system will ensure the safe and secure integration of drones in the airspace especially in urban areas, taking into account ew and existing air vehicles and autonomous operations. One of the most challenging use cases from U-space will be to enable urban air mobility, which is expected to advance autonomous technologies in a number of areas.

Virtualisation and cyber-secure data sharing
Service provision will be decoupled from the physical infrastructure, enabling air traffic and data service providers, irrespective of national borders, to plug in their operations where needed in a secure manner.

Multimodality and passenger experience
Considering ATM to be an integrated part of an intermodal transport system will make it possible to share data between modes and to collaborate better to optimise the performance of both the overall transport system and the door-to-door journey.

Aviation green deal
Europe should be the world’s most environmentally-friendly continent to fly. This requires putting in place solutions to enable aircraft to fly their optimum fuel-efficient 4D trajectory gate-to-gate, and integrating next generation aircraft that will be cleaner and quieter.

Artificial intelligence (AI) for aviation
Tomorrow's aviation infrastructure will be more data-intensive. Thanks to the pplication of machine learning, deep learning and big data analytics, we will be able to design an ATM system that is smarter and safer by constantly analysing and learning from the ATM environment.

Civil/Military interoperability and coordination
Dual-use technologies such as those for communications, navigation and surveillance, and other solutions that allow real-time exchange of trajectory information will improve the predictability of military operations and overall network capacity.

The SESAR Joint undertaking has published highlights of the SESAR 2020 programme and innovation pipeline, providing a summary of projects behind the acronyms and and results over the last 12 months!

The brochure details work that has been launched as well as some of the results stemming from all three strands of research in the SESAR Innovation Pipeline, namely exploratory research, industrial research and large-scale demonstration. The publication also updates readers on the status of research done to date on U-space, the European Commission’s initiative for the safe and secure integration of drones in Europe.

The brochure shows, that despite the COVID pandemic, the projects experienced minimal delays and were able to adapt their validation schedules and set-up to continue their research and innovation activities.

SESAR Solutions refer to new or improved operational procedures or technologies that aim to contribute to the modernisation of the European and global ATM system.  Framed within the European ATM Master Plan, these solutions address all parts of the ATM value chain, from airports, air traffic services to the network, as well as the underlying systems architectures and technological enablers, which are validated in real day-to-day operations.