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Aerospace

Digital Twin Simulator of the National Airspace System (NAS)
The digital twin NAS simulator provides a complete digital copy of the individual systems that comprise the NAS to allow for the creation of offline simulations to test proposed changes to one or more individual systems based on actual historical data from the NAS or on real-time data from the NAS. The NAS is composed of a collection of systems, including source systems such as weather stations from various locations or airports, which are used by other systems such as individual aircraft flight data and airline operators. Other systems may include management systems such as the FAA, air traffic control centers, and flight traffic monitors. Operational data from each of these systems may be archived by a central information sharing platform such as the System Wide Information Management (SWIM) Program operated by the FAA. The digital twin NAS simulator can access archived SWIM data to create a digital twin NAS system to provide a virtual environment that may operate in real-time alongside the actual NAS, with the digital twin receiving live data updates from the actual NAS. A dedicated application programming interface (API) is used to facilitate communication between various distributed external components and the testbed. The testbed receives NAS data during a test and feeds the data to the simulation manager for use with a digital twin of the NAS system. The result is a virtual environment that is an exact twin of the actual operational system and is able to function identically to the actual NAS system because it is based on and uses the same data archived from the actual NAS system. A primary function of the virtual twin NAS is that it will allow for changes to one or more systems to be simulated against the archived NAS data and subsequently allow for a comparison between the simulated results and the actual results from the operational system. The digital twin simulator may also function in a distributed network environment, allowing for simulations of different elements to run simultaneously, which speeds up and improves the testing and evaluation of proposed changes.