AVIATION ANALYTICS AND THE INTERNET OF THINGS
Dr. Paul Comitz, Self-Employed
Aaron Kersch, The Boeing Company
Abstract
This paper describes a series of short
experiments collecting and analyzing ADS B data
using IoT (Internet of Things) devices. The collection
is performed using a Raspberry Pi single board
computer, an RTL-SDR radio, custom software
written for the project, and the open source
dump1090 software program. This Raspberry
Pi/RTL-SDR/dump1090 combination is used to
collect ADS-B data. The data is captured and
archived using a software program that reads the
ADS-B data in real time as it is received by the RTL-
SDR radio and subsequently output by the
dump1090 program. The captured data is written to
a series of flat files. Subsequent analytics and
analysis is performed using the R programming
language and the R Studio environment. The paper
describes a subset of the R code that that was used in
the analysis. All of the custom software used in this
project is freely available at GitHub (see References
section).
An exhaustive analysis is not performed as part
of this work. The intent of the limited analysis in this
work is to provide a proof of concept for the kinds of
analyses that could be done, if aviation data, such as
ADS, was widely and freely available.
The analysis that is performed is an initial top
level analysis, designed to assess the feasibility of
using this low cost combination of hardware,
software, and analysis tools for use in advisory air
traffic applications such as airspace monitoring and
traffic monitoring. Suggestions and
recommendations for additional work appear in the
Observations and Continuing Work sections of this
paper.
Introduction and Motivation
The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the
proliferation and deployment of specialized devices
that communicate across a network. IoT devices are
often defined as devices that:
are connected to a network
978-1-5090-2149-9/16/$31.00 2016 IEEE
2A1-1
have computational ability
often contain an embedded sensor
Implicit in this definition is the understanding
that these devices are often designed for a specific
purpose. The network connectivity and
computational ability support this specific purpose
rather than being the main purpose of the device - as
is usually the case with general purpose computing
devices. For example, a refrigerator or household
appliance connected to a network can provide alerts
that the door is ajar, or the temperature is too low [1].
The appliance could be controlled remotely with a
mobile device such as a cell phone or a table or a
central home automation system.
The use of IoT devices and deployments in
aviation is being discussed at conferences and events
that are not traditionally focused on aviation. For
example, Chris OConner, general manager of IBM
IoT Offerings [2] described the approach of Airbus
SAS to commercial aircraft manufacturing as an
assembly of 6 million parts, 3000 suppliers located
all over Europe, with assembly in Toulouse, France.
. OConnor goes on to note that the process is
evolving to one where all parts are digitally
enabled. The entire process is then deployed to a
large scale engineering map enabling the control
and monitor of the manufacturing process.
At the unveiling of the IBM Watson IoT world
headquarters in Munich. German, Airbus SAS Senior
Vice President Laurent Martinez states the future of
aviation is about data [3] a non-intuitive statement
about an industry that has been historically
dominated by large scale manufacturing, focused on
materials science and manufacturing methods.
Martinez emphasizes this point by pointing out that
an A350 flight generates more than 250 GB of data.
Martinez describes potential IoT applications such as
smart baggage (see http://rimowa-
electronictag.com/de-DE/start), smart towing, smart
fleet management, smart trajectories and 4D
navigation, smart taxi, and gate-to-gate operations.
 This paper embraces these admittedly grand
ideas for aviation and the IoT by exploring the
possibilities of very low cost data collection and
subsequent analytics analysis of an aviation related
sensor, namely an ADS-B receiver. The penetration
and availability of these low cost devices may
provide an ideal environment for new applications
and efficiencies that have been historically closed to
all but insiders in the aviation industry Although the
prices of an ADS-B receiver have been dropping for
some time, the prototype systems shown here can be
assembled and run by almost anyone, with a minimal
cash investment and just a little aviation know
how.
Organization and Components
The remainder of this paper is organized as
described here. The Components section briefly
describes each of the hardware and software
components that were used. The Analysis section
describes the collected data and provides an initial
short analysis of the data. This paper concludes with
a section on Observations which contains
recommendations for future work. A brief references
section is also included.
Components
The following components have been used in
this work:
1. Raspberry Pi 2 Single Board Computer
2. RTL-SDR radio
3. Open source software: dump1090
4. Data Archive and Analytics Analysis
software
A brief description of each component follows:
Raspberry Pi
The Raspberry PI is an increasingly popular low
cost, single board computer. The heart of the device
is a Broadcom ARM-based system on a chip (SOC).
The SOC contains an ARM processor, and support
for I/O peripherals, graphics, and memory access.
The single board has USB, HDMI, and Ethernet
interfaces. This system used in this work is connected
to a network via an inexpensive (less than $10) 150
mbps USB Wi-Fi adapter. The operating system, an
open source Linux variant, resides on a 16 GB SD
card.
2A1-2
Software Defined Radio
The sensor that receives the ADS B signals is a
software defined radio (SDR). In a traditional radio,
fundamental components such as amplifiers and
modulators are built using hardware. In an SDR, this
functionality is realized in software. The SDR that is
used in this work is known as an R820T RTL2832U.
The device, with two antennas, is available for $21.
This device was original designed for the DVB-T
(digital video broadcast-terrestrial), a European
standard for television broadcast. The device has a
frequency range of 24 MHz to 1766 MHz, which
easily allows the receipt of the 1090 MHz ADS-B
signal. The device connects to the Raspberry Pi as a
USB dongle (see Figure 1). The antenna is connected
via a female SMA port. Although the device ships
with two inexpensive antennas, this work uses a 75
ohm digital indoor TV antenna, connected to the
radio via an SMA connector.
Figure 1. RTL-SDR Radio Dongle
SDR provides the capability for dynamic radio
configuration and software signal processing, thus
enabling an inexpensive wideband scanning
capability. The RTL2832U device is also capable of
listening to air traffic control radio conversations and
decoding VHF Aircraft Communications Addressing
and Reporting System (ACARS) messages.
Dump 1090 Open Source Software
Dump1090 [4] is an open source Mode S
decoder. It was written to be used with RTL SDR
radios. Dump1090 decodes the mode S downlink
format (DF) 11 and DF 17 messages. The DF 17
extended squitter messages contain information such
as aircraft position, squitter status, identity, and
airborne velocity. Dump1090 also contains an
embedded web server and the ability to view received
ADS reports on a Google map (See Figure 2). There
is also a capability to view recorded data. All source
code for dump1090 is available from github [4].
Figure 2 shows ADS reports, received in the
Charleston, South Carolina area in March 2016. The
data is from a single RTL-SDR based ADS receiver.
 that provided by the java URLConnection class. The
data is captured by listening on the following URL:

http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx::8080/dump1090/data.json

where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the IP address of the

Figure 2. ADS Data Display
Raspberry PI. The initial data archive is described in
the Analysis section
Analytics Software
The collected ADS-B data is analyzed using the
R programming language. R is a programming
language designed for use in statistical and analytic
applications. R grew out of the S programming
language, originally developed by AT&T. For this
work, the R Studio development environment was
used. Both R and R Studio are free to download and
use.

Data Capture Software Analysis

The dunp1090 program provides the ADS-B
reports as JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). A
typical JSON report is shown below. The first field,
labeled hex is the 24 bit ICAO aircraft identifier.
This example report is from American Airlines 722,
from KMCO Orlando to KPHL Philadelphia.
{ and off peak hours the file size is approximately 1.5
"hex": "ad9811",
"squawk": "0764",
"flight": "AAL722",
"lat": 33.288712,
"lon": -80.404816,
"validposition": 1,
"altitude": 29025,
"vert_rate": 64,
"track": 26,
"validtrack": 1,
"speed": 509,
"messages": 921,
"seen": 177,
"mlat": false
} The data is raw and unprocessed at this point.
These reports, normally designed for display in a
web browser, as shown in Figure 2 can be captured
and archived using almost any general purpose
computing language with network capability. The
program used here was written in the java
programming language. The JSON data is published
by the dump1090 program on TCP port 8080. The
data can be captured by using a network API such as
The data is captured using the previously
described data capture software. The data is archived
as a series of text files of comma separated values. A
new file is created every six hours, to avoid any file
from getting too large. A typical file, collected during
the day is approximately 9.5 MB. During overnight
to 2 MB. A typical day file contains over 100,000
observations of 14 variables. For example, the data
collected on March 18, 2016 starting at 081945
(EST) contains 111,336 observations of 14 variables.
The analysis tool is the R Programming
language, described above. The first step in the
analysis is to read the data. The March 18th data
described above is easily read into the R
environment. If we name the R data frame (an R data
structure) ads, the data is read with:
ads<-
read.csv("20160318_081945.txt")
To make the data easier to work with, it is useful to
add column names to the data frame. This done with:
colnames(ads)<-
c("time","icao","squawk","flight","
lat","long","validPos","alt","vert_
rate","track","validTrack","speed",
"messages", seen,"mlat")

2A1-3
 Those familiar with ADS will recognize many of
the parameters from the 1090 MHz ADS report.
The collected data contains many incomplete
reports. To check the number of reports with a valid
position in the example data frame, use the following:
adsValid<-
which(ads$validPos==1)
This returns a vector of 35795 values, where
each value is the index of the corresponding ADS
report. This indicates that 32% (35795/111,336) of
the collected ADS reports contains a valid aircraft
position. The next step is to isolate all of the ADS
reports with a valid position in a single R data frame:
validFrame<-
ads[ads$validPos==1,]
The above command returns all rows in the
original unprocessed data set where a valid position
is reported. The results of a quick initial look at this
data frame are shown in Table 1.
Table 1. Initial Observations
ADS Data Item Observation
Number of distinct 655
ICAO Codes
Number of non-zero 30795
transponder codes
Number of reported 296
call signs
Minimum Altitude 575 feet
Maximum altitude 45000 feet
Latitude range 31.93533/33.87689 N
Longitude range 79.34001/81.5894 W
Table 1 is a quick look at the available data and
is offered to show how quickly one can get a basic
view of the airspace over the six-hour collection
period. The data shows 655 24 bit ICAO
identifications in the collected data. Of the 35795
reports that show a valid position, there are 655
ICAO codes. This suggests 655 aircraft were viewed
in this the 6 hour time period. Of the 655 aircraft,
296 reported a valid call sign in the transmitted ADS
report. The extent of the geographic area was
approximately 163 nautical miles from the
2A1-4
northernmost position to the southernmost position,
referenced to the antenna position (Summerville,
South Carolina).
It is also possible to assess the quality of the
data. Note Figure 3. Figure 3 is a plot of latitude and
longitude. The cluster in the corner shows that most
observations are in the area 32.5 N and 80.5 W (west
shown as a negative number). However, a number of
the observations are clearly incorrect. Some of the
collected data shows latitude of -57 and longitude of -
61 degrees. A closer examination of the data on this
day showed that all of the incorrect observations
where from a single aircraft.
Figure 3. ADS Lat/Long Plot
Continuing the data analysis, consider a single
flight. For illustration Jet Blue Flight 1099
(JBU1099) is shown. JBU1099 departed New York
LGA on March 18th at approximately 630 am and
arrived in Florida MCO at approximately 905 am.
The flight was an Airbus A320. As indicated above,
the R data frame validFrame contains the ADS
reports from all aircraft that reported a valid position.
The data frame can be split and subsetted to isolate
the data for a single flight. There are many ways to
do this in the R environment. Once way to do this is:
byFlight <-split(validFrame,
validFrame$flight)
jbu1099 <- byFlight$`JBU1099 `
The code above results in an R data frame that
contains only the reports from the aircraft with call
sign JBU1099. The resulting data frame contains 142
ADS reports. The reports begin at 081945 EST and
end at 083135 EST, The initial altitude is 35650 feet
and the ending altitude is 34000 feet.

Figure 4. JBU1099
A map with several of the positions plotted
appears in Figure 4. A quick look at the JUB1099
data is shown in Table 2.
Table 2 . JBU1099
Data Observation
Number of ADS reports 143
Minimum Altitude 34000 feet
Maximum Altitude 35650 feet
Latitude range 32.13162/32.64369 N
Longitude range 80.22262/80.59702 W
Observations
The hardware, software, and analysis described
in this paper can be done with a very low monetary
investment. The hardware cost is less than $100..
The software is combination of custom developed
software and open source software. The major
investment is the labor of the individuals assembling
and maintaining the system and doing the work.
The intent of this ongoing work is to assess the
viability of low cost open source hardware and
software for use in aviation applications. The use of
technologies like ADS-B and ACARS has been
traditionally limited to individuals with detailed
knowledge of aviation operations and information
that is not generally available. This work shows that
IoT technology starts to break down this barrier.
Only a few years ago work like this would not have
been possible because the general public did not have
wide access to ADS data. The basic work presented
here shows that historically closed data sets and
2A1-5
analysis techniques are now widely available and
accessible to anyone with the a little aviation
knowledge.
The hardware and software used here was
designed and configured for rapid prototyping.
Reliability, fault tolerance, and automatic failover
were not part of the design criteria. Given the low
cost of the equipment, setup and deployment of
redundant systems is a reasonable idea.
Example applications might be a low cost
airspace monitoring system or an advisory traffic
analysis system. The addition of weather is a
plausible next step
Continuing Work
This paper is submitted to the ICNS conference
on April 18th, 2016. At the time of this submission,
the paper and the analysis are not complete. The
analysis will continue and further analysis will be
reported in the future.
The following are potential candidates for
investigation and experimentation.
1. Deployment of a network of privately
owned, low cost ADS receivers. The
receiver could be similar to the receiver used
and described in this paper. Each receiver
would archive the collected data and store
the data to a future, publically accessible
cloud repository. This kind of approach is
already being done by private companies,
but the data is not being shared. In order to
provide a public network of archived data, a
way to modestly monetize the costs
associated with the deployment and
maintenance of an ADS B receiver must be
provided. There is currently no motivation,
other that of the hobbyist/tinkerer, to deploy
and share the data.
2. Design a capability for fault tolerance and
failover of low cost ADS receivers.
Although the receiver described in this paper
was surprisingly reliable, (it ran for months
with almost no maintenance, and is still
running as this paper is written) , the
receiver would go offline occasionally. The
majority of these observations were a simple
loss of network connectivity.

3. Analysis and analytics tools for aviation
data. The Comprehensive R Archive
Network (CRAN) is the home site of tools
and resources available for use with the R
Programming language. An R package is a
collection of functionality for use with the R
programming language and environment. R
packages are available as a directory of files
that extend the R programming language
and the environment. R packages are
available for finance, business and customer
analytics, economics and other domain
specific applied pursuits. At the time this
paper is written there are over 8000
packages available for R at the CRAN site.
An R package for use with aviation data
would have significant potential utility if
aviation data such as the ADS data
described in this paper was widely available.
References
[1] Harris, Ian 2016, Introduction to the Internet of
Things and Embedded Systems. Retrieved from
http://www.coursera.org/
2A1-6
[2] OConnor, Chris, 2016, Cognitive IoT: Linking
the Physical and Digital Worlds to Transform
Business, InterConnect February 21, 2016, Las
Vegas, Nevada. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Xd7NAREwG
Y&list=TL5zg0QUb9HxgxOTAzMjAxNg
[3] Martinez, Laurent, 2015, Airbus: Managing
Aviation Complexity with the Internet of Things.
Munich, Germany. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JO-gvXf-kI
[4] Sanfilippo, Salvator, Dump1090 Mode S Decoder
Open Source Software, retrieved from
https://github.com/antirez/dump1090
Email Addresses
The email addresses of the authors of this paper
appear below.
pcomitz@live.com
aaron.kersch@boeing.com
2016 Integrated Communications Navigation
and Surveillance (ICNS) Conference
April 19-21, 2016