To provide air navigation services, our controllers use systems that present all the position, altitude, speed and flight plan data of each aircraft on the radar screen.
ENAV has a state-of-the-art network of primary and secondary radars that cover all Italian airspace with considerable redundancy for extreme data accuracy, which is a key element of efficient and safe air traffic management.
Primary radar detects the presence of an aircraft by transmitting an electromagnetic signal through an antenna, while secondary radar is also able to measure the distance of the aircraft based on the time elapsed between the transmission of the pulses and reception by the transponder, so that controllers always have a view of the exact position of the aircraft.
ENAV uses 9 primary radars and 12 secondary radars for controlling en-route traffic, and 18 primary and 18 secondary radars for approach control. For ground control at airports in low visibility conditions (at night or in the fog), we employ 10 ground radars and 3 multilateration systems. The latter are systems based on the calculation of time differences between when a signal is emitted by a transponder on board an aircraft and when it is picked up by a ground detection station. The result of these calculations gives the exact position of the aircraft.
