Multi-Route Aircraft Trajectory Prediction Using Temporal Fusion Transformers

Trajectory prediction plays a key role in modern air traffic management. The ability to predict the future position of aircraft in flight allows for greater predictability, safety and efficiency. In recent years, recurrent neural networks, and particularly LSTM (Long-Short Term Memory), have been su...

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Main Authors: Jorge Silvestre, Paula Mielgo, Anibal Bregon, Miguel A. Martinez-Prieto, Pedro C. Alvarez-Esteban
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2024-01-01
Series:IEEE Access
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Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10577632/
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author Jorge Silvestre
Paula Mielgo
Anibal Bregon
Miguel A. Martinez-Prieto
Pedro C. Alvarez-Esteban
author_facet Jorge Silvestre
Paula Mielgo
Anibal Bregon
Miguel A. Martinez-Prieto
Pedro C. Alvarez-Esteban
author_sort Jorge Silvestre
collection DOAJ
description Trajectory prediction plays a key role in modern air traffic management. The ability to predict the future position of aircraft in flight allows for greater predictability, safety and efficiency. In recent years, recurrent neural networks, and particularly LSTM (Long-Short Term Memory), have been successfully applied (alone or in combination with other kinds of network) to this problem. However, the criticality of the supervision of these operations and the difficulty of predicting trajectories in high density traffic zones, such the Terminal Area around the airports, require high accuracy methods that takes into account all factors involved in these operations. In this paper, we propose an architecture based on Temporal Fusion Transformer (TFT) for multi-route, long-term trajectory prediction using surveillance data (Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Broadcast, ADS-B). We conduct our experiments on the case study of the Madrid Barajas-Adolfo Suárez airport (Spain), using nine months worth of data. In particular, we focus on predicting the next 150 seconds at any point in the trajectory for flights arriving at this airport. Compared with other LSTM networks developed in this work, TFT provides an increased accuracy for 2D positioning, with mean absolute errors of 0.0091 and 0.0104 degrees for latitude and longitude, respectively, in the Terminal Area of the destination airport. These results have been shown to be competitive with, or even superior to, more consolidated approaches based on LSTM networks that have been proposed for single route, short-term predictions.
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spelling doaj-art-93960f4d22c24590a7e879f37f2ac9ee2025-08-20T02:22:40ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362024-01-011217409417410610.1109/ACCESS.2024.341541910577632Multi-Route Aircraft Trajectory Prediction Using Temporal Fusion TransformersJorge Silvestre0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4904-494XPaula Mielgo1https://orcid.org/0009-0000-5908-4112Anibal Bregon2https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6752-1159Miguel A. Martinez-Prieto3Pedro C. Alvarez-Esteban4https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8818-0194Department of Computer Science, University of Valladolid, Segovia, SpainDepartment of Computer Science, University of Valladolid, Segovia, SpainDepartment of Computer Science, University of Valladolid, Segovia, SpainDepartment of Computer Science, University of Valladolid, Segovia, SpainDepartment of Statistics and Operational Research, University of Valladolid, Valladolid, SpainTrajectory prediction plays a key role in modern air traffic management. The ability to predict the future position of aircraft in flight allows for greater predictability, safety and efficiency. In recent years, recurrent neural networks, and particularly LSTM (Long-Short Term Memory), have been successfully applied (alone or in combination with other kinds of network) to this problem. However, the criticality of the supervision of these operations and the difficulty of predicting trajectories in high density traffic zones, such the Terminal Area around the airports, require high accuracy methods that takes into account all factors involved in these operations. In this paper, we propose an architecture based on Temporal Fusion Transformer (TFT) for multi-route, long-term trajectory prediction using surveillance data (Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Broadcast, ADS-B). We conduct our experiments on the case study of the Madrid Barajas-Adolfo Suárez airport (Spain), using nine months worth of data. In particular, we focus on predicting the next 150 seconds at any point in the trajectory for flights arriving at this airport. Compared with other LSTM networks developed in this work, TFT provides an increased accuracy for 2D positioning, with mean absolute errors of 0.0091 and 0.0104 degrees for latitude and longitude, respectively, in the Terminal Area of the destination airport. These results have been shown to be competitive with, or even superior to, more consolidated approaches based on LSTM networks that have been proposed for single route, short-term predictions.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10577632/LSTM networkstemporal fusion transformerair traffic managementtrajectory prediction
spellingShingle Jorge Silvestre
Paula Mielgo
Anibal Bregon
Miguel A. Martinez-Prieto
Pedro C. Alvarez-Esteban
Multi-Route Aircraft Trajectory Prediction Using Temporal Fusion Transformers
IEEE Access
LSTM networks
temporal fusion transformer
air traffic management
trajectory prediction
title Multi-Route Aircraft Trajectory Prediction Using Temporal Fusion Transformers
title_full Multi-Route Aircraft Trajectory Prediction Using Temporal Fusion Transformers
title_fullStr Multi-Route Aircraft Trajectory Prediction Using Temporal Fusion Transformers
title_full_unstemmed Multi-Route Aircraft Trajectory Prediction Using Temporal Fusion Transformers
title_short Multi-Route Aircraft Trajectory Prediction Using Temporal Fusion Transformers
title_sort multi route aircraft trajectory prediction using temporal fusion transformers
topic LSTM networks
temporal fusion transformer
air traffic management
trajectory prediction
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10577632/
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AT anibalbregon multirouteaircrafttrajectorypredictionusingtemporalfusiontransformers
AT miguelamartinezprieto multirouteaircrafttrajectorypredictionusingtemporalfusiontransformers
AT pedrocalvarezesteban multirouteaircrafttrajectorypredictionusingtemporalfusiontransformers