Monitoring airport ground support equipment

Part one: ground equipment. An FMM650 tracker from the Teltonika professional range goes on the apron vehicles and plant (for some vehicles an FMM640 from the same family will do). This is a terminal for demanding projects: a great deal of external equipment can be connected to it, and one device covers several jobs at once.

The FMM650 reads FMS CAN bus data over the SAE J1939 protocol and the J1708 bus, supports Bluetooth and comes with a set of ready-made scenarios. That is why it works with both diesel and electric equipment. Along with GNSS coordinates, the tracker sends the vehicle's parameters to the server.

What those parameters are. The position of a tug or an apron bus, fuel consumption and fuel level, mileage and speed, engine fault codes, the state of the seat belts and lights, speeding, extended idling, crash indications, geofences. For electric equipment, data about running time and idle periods.

What this gives you on the apron. The dispatcher sees all the equipment on a map and knows which tug is free nearest to the stand of an arriving aircraft. Speeding on the apron, with aircraft and people close by, is recorded at once. Extended idling of diesel equipment shows up in the report. The workshop receives fault codes and services vehicles according to actual hours rather than the calendar.

Part two: objects and people inside buildings. Here Bluetooth Low Energy beacons do the work — small radio transmitters, each of which continuously broadcasts its own identifier. Beacons are attached to whatever needs finding: trolleys, wheelchairs, expensive tools, containers, staff personal transporters. A beacon can be issued to a member of staff too.

How the network is arranged. FMM130 trackers from the advanced range are mounted permanently on ceilings or high on walls: in terminals, baggage halls, corridors, on staircases, in hangars and in car parks. They act as gateways: they hear the beacons nearby and report to the server which beacon is next to which gateway. That is how a map of what is where inside a building is built up.

What the network can do. One Teltonika tracker sees up to 100 beacons at the same time. A beacon runs on a single battery for between 2 and 10 years depending on the model. Signal strength and transmission interval are configured for the particular space, so the arrangement suits buildings of any shape and size.

What this gives you. The special assistance team quickly finds a free wheelchair. Technicians in a hangar do not spend half an hour looking for an expensive tool. You can see which trolleys have gone outside the permitted zone. The head of security sees where his teams are now and can coordinate contractors.

Part three: who is at the wheel and for how long. Drivers and operators are identified over the 1-Wire bus. A 1-Wire RFID reader connected to the FMM650 is mounted on the dashboard. Every member of staff has a contactless RFID card with a unique 64-bit number written at the factory. By presenting the card at the start of work, the driver logs on to the vehicle and the tracker records an exact date and time stamp. A Teltonika EYE Beacon can be used instead of a card.

What the HR department gets. The exact working time of every driver and operator on every vehicle. Together with third-party software, this data can be used to calculate meal breaks, overtime, idle time, travel time to a site, holidays and sick leave, allowances and expenses automatically. Arguments about who worked the night on a tug are settled with an export from the system.

One episode from a shift. A flight lands twenty minutes early. The shift supervisor opens the map and sees that the nearest free tug is standing by the neighbouring sector and the steps are by the hangar. He calls both drivers on the radio and follows the equipment towards the stand through the system. At the same time the special assistance team locates two free wheelchairs in the arrivals area from their beacons. Everything is ready by the time the doors open.

Electric equipment. For electric tugs, loaders and transporters on lithium batteries, the tracker shows how much the machine actually worked during a shift, how long it stood and when it was put on charge. That helps establish whether the electric fleet is sufficient for the peak hours, or whether some machines stand idle while others are worked into the ground. If the equipment reports battery data over CAN, that can be shown in the reports too.

Geofences on the airfield. The apron is divided into zones: aircraft stands, service roads, restricted areas, equipment parking places. Each zone has its own rules — the permitted speed, who may drive into it, how long equipment may stay there. A vehicle without clearance entering the area by the runway, or speeding next to an aircraft stand, reaches the duty officer as a notification immediately.

Which reports are the most useful. The utilisation of each piece of equipment by hour and by shift, so as to know how many tugs and buses are really needed at the peak. Idling of diesel vehicles and the fuel consumption that goes with it. Speeding offences on the apron, attached to a driver by his RFID card. Engine hours for planned maintenance. Movements of trolleys and tools between zones, to track down losses.

Matching equipment to flights. In the basic arrangement the system does not know the flight schedule: the dispatcher himself picks the nearest free vehicle from the map. An automatic prompt telling you which tug to send to which aircraft requires integration with the airport management system through an API, and that is a separate project.

Pilot criteria. The pilot counts as a success when it is clear what proportion of the equipment actually reports data over CAN, whether the track on the apron is smooth, whether the gateways find beacons in every mapped zone of the terminal, whether the RFID cards attach drivers to vehicles correctly, and how long a notification about an offence takes to reach the duty officer.

How the rollout goes. First the fleet is surveyed: what equipment there is, which vehicles have an accessible CAN bus, where analogue sensors are needed. In parallel the buildings are mapped out for the network of beacon gateways. Then the equipment is fitted to a pilot group of vehicles and one terminal zone, the data and reports are checked, and only after that is the system extended to the whole airport. That order of work means apron operations do not have to stop, and bottlenecks are found in advance.