European Journal of Operational Research 241 (2015) 502512

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European Journal of Operational Research

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ejor

Innovative Applications of O.R.

Solving air trac conict problems via local continuous optimization

Clment Peyronne a,, Andrew R. Conn b , Marcel Mongeau c,d , Daniel Delahaye c,d
a

Capgemini, 15 av. du Dr Maurice Grynfogel, 31000 Toulouse, France

IBM, T.J. Watson Research Center, P.O. Box 218, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598, USA
ENAC, MAIAA, F-31055 Toulouse, France
d
Universit de Toulouse, IMT, F-31400 Toulouse, France
b
c

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 29 August 2012
Accepted 31 August 2014
Available online 28 September 2014
Keywords:
Air trac conict problem
B-splines
Continuous optimization
Genetic algorithms
Semi-innite programming

a b s t r a c t
This paper rst introduces an original trajectory model using B-splines and a new semi-innite programming formulation of the separation constraint involved in air trac conict problems. A new continuous
optimization formulation of the tactical conict-resolution problem is then proposed. It involves very few
optimization variables in that one needs only one optimization variable to determine each aircraft trajectory. Encouraging numerical experiments show that this approach is viable on realistic test problems. Not
only does one not need to rely on the traditional, discretized, combinatorial optimization approaches to this
problem, but, moreover, local continuous optimization methods, which require relatively fewer iterations
and thereby fewer costly function evaluations, are shown to improve the performance of the overall global
optimization of this non-convex problem.
2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
This introduction describes the importance of the conictresolution problem, followed by some details on related work.
1.1. Context
Air trac management (ATM) aims at ensuring smooth running of
the transportation system under safety and schedule alignment constraints while keeping ights on schedule. In order to reach this goal,
air trac is planned at different time frames. Strategical planning is
done several months before take-off and consists of assigning ight
plans for a whole day of trac with an emphasis on an even distribution of aircraft density in space and time. Pre-tactical planning then
updates the strategical planning trajectories using information such
as weather or airspace congestion. It takes place two hours before the
aircraft reaches the considered airspace. Tactical planning, the subject
of this study, is performed within a 20-minute time horizon and consists mainly of conict detection and resolution. This tactical planning
work has always been done by air trac controllers who are in charge
of the most critical aspect of ATM, namely, ensuring sucient separation between airplanes. Air trac controllers are responsible for

Corresponding author. Tel.: +33 627025703.

E-mail addresses: clement.peyronne@capgemini.com (C. Peyronne),
arconn@us.ibm.com (A. R. Conn), mongeau@recherche.enac.fr (M. Mongeau),
daniel.delahaye@recherche.enac.fr (D. Delahaye).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2014.08.045
0377-2217/ 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

ensuring the respect of regulatory separation rules that are currently

5 nautical miles horizontally and 1000 feet vertically.
A conict situation happens when an aircraft enters the standard
safety zone of another aircraft (a situation where a regulatory separation rule is not respected). Our work focuses on tactical planning,
which is currently handled by air trac controllers on each airspace
sector. To solve a conict, controllers can use a set of maneuvers: offset, turning point, speed change, and ight-level change. For instance,
Fig. 1 shows maneuvers implying direction changes.
As a consequence of increasing trac, controllers in charge of an
airspace sector must handle more and more ights (see Fig. 2). The
current approach is to decrease the size of the control sectors in order
to compensate for the growth of trac. However, the trac is reaching the point where a decrease of the size of sectors is no longer ecient. In reality, ATM has already used every available resource in an
attempt to increase airspace capacity. However, from now to 2030, air
trac is expected to increase by a factor of two or three (SESAR Joint
Undertaking, 2009). Consequently, ATM will have to deal with this
overload while ensuring at least similar standards of safety (SESAR
Joint Undertaking, 2009). As is illustrated in Fig. 2, the difference of
trac capacity between 1970 and 2010 is rather dramatic.
In this context, the long-term vision aims at lowering the workload
of the air trac controllers by reducing the conict-resolution task.
An example is the 4D-trajectory concept, which consists of dening
precisely a trajectory in space and time. One option is to create an
automatic conict-resolution tool to provide advisory solutions to
the controller. Some previous work has been done in the direction

C. Peyronne et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 241 (2015) 502512

Initial trajectories

Turning point

Oset

Fig. 1. Two maneuvers implying direction changes.

Fig. 2. Evolution of trac, number of sector, controllers and the number of ights per
controller.

of automatic-conict resolution (see Bosc, Durand and Maugis 1997)

but to our knowledge, none has been used operationally yet.
1.2. Previous related work
One approach for air trac automatic conict resolution uses navigation functions (Dimarogonas & Kyriakopoulos, 2005; Roussos &
Kyriakopoulos, 2009). What follows is a presentation of the repulsive force technique that inspired the navigation function methods
(the repulsive force technique is much more intuitive and easier to

503

comprehend). A repulsive force technique considers the airspace as

a potential eld, and aircraft as particles navigating in it. Negative
charges represent obstacles for the aircraft (other aircraft, congested
areas). The destination is associated with a positive charge. As a result,
each aircraft is attracted by its destination while being repulsed by
obstacles, as is illustrated by Fig. 3. Each trajectory is determined in
its own functional space so that an aircraft cannot be attracted by the
destination of another aircraft. This enables the automatic generation
of conict-free trajectories.
Navigation function methods were shown to ensure collision
avoidance while connecting the departure and destination points. The
major drawback of navigation functions is that the obtained solution
does not necessarily respect ATM constraints such as the particular
bounded speed (an aircraft cannot y below or above a certain range
of speed), or trajectory smoothness. Furthermore, they can lead to
major delays and overcosts as they tolerate large deviations from the
direct route, i.e. the straight line between the departure and arrival
points.
Optimization methods have also been used in air trac automatic
conict resolution. In Pallottino, Feron and Bicchi (2002), two approaches based on a local optimization method are presented. One
approach considers using only speed changes, and the other relies
solely on direction changes. However, the speed-change approach
cannot solve every conict situation (simply consider a face-to-face
situation for example), and their direction-change approach is restricted to straight-line maneuvers.
Further developments are presented in Alonso-Ayuso, Escudero,
and Martin-Campo (2011) combining speed and altitude changes and
using a mixed-integer linear optimization approach. This method provides very interesting results both from the point of view of computational time and the quality of resolution on conict situation involving
up to 50 aircraft (which are not all involved in the same conict however). In Alonso-Ayuso et al. (2011) a method is presented that relies
on exact optimization, which is a signicant advantage. However, the
use of altitude changes is a drawback as it induces costly maneuvers
that are avoided by air trac controllers due to their high costs in fuel
that are unacceptable for airline companies.
Remaining optimization methods for this problem rely on heuristics. The authors of Durand and Alliot (1995) and Mdioni, Durand and
Alliot (1994) obtain relatively good results on real trac using Genetic
algorithms (GA). However, their approach is restricted to offset and
turning-point maneuvers, i.e. piecewise-linear trajectories. Similarly,
using ant colony optimization and modelling trajectories as a path
in a graph, Durand and Alliot (2009) and Olive (2006) are conned

Potential line

Aircraft 2

Sliding
force
Relative speed 2/1
Relative speed 1/2

Potential line
Repulsive
force

Sliding force

Aircraft
Sliding force
Aircraft 1

Obstacle
Potential line
Fig. 3. Repulsive force between an aircraft and an obstacle (left), between two aircraft (right).

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C. Peyronne et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 241 (2015) 502512

to produce piecewise-linear trajectories. Finally, another recent solution for tactical conict resolution, presented in Dougui, Delahaye,
Puechmorel and Mongeau (2012), called LPA (Light Propagation Algorithm), is inspired by an analogy with light propagation. LPA uses
a Branch-and-Bound technique to build trajectories and obtains good
results on a full day of trac over France. However, the trajectories
are built sequentially, which can cause signicant deviations for some
aircraft. For more detail on air trac conict detection and resolution,
see the reviews by Delahaye and Puechmorel (2013) and Kuchar and
Yang (2000).
1.3. Limitation of scope
There are three means to solve an air trac conict: speed
changes, direction changes and altitude changes (of course, reducing the trac also naturally decrease the number of conict). This
paper focuses on tactical en-route conict resolution, which in our
case means we consider a 20-minute time horizon. Thus, this study
considers only direction changes, as speed changes are not as ecient on such a short time frame, and as altitude changes are only
used as a last resort by air trac control (because of their cost and
the passenger discomfort they engender). That is why, in this paper,
each aircraft is also assumed to preserve its imposed vertical prole.
Consequently, as the study concentrates on en-route trac, aircraft
are considered to y at a stable altitude, which means solving the
conicts solely in two dimensions.
This paper presents a tractable and practical method to solve tactical conicts on the considered time horizon, involving only a small
part of the trajectory (corresponding to the considered 20-minute
window). One of the contributions of this paper is to model trajectories with B-splines. The overall trajectory is to be managed by an
algorithm that aggregates the separate 20-minute windows. To treat
a large air trac instance (for example the French en-route air trac),
the conict solver presented in the paper is to be applied at regular
time intervals using a moving time-window. Furthermore, the solver
can be applied on different geographical zones at the same time. See
Dougui et al. (2012) for more details on this moving time-window
process. For these reasons, computational eciency is an important
aspect of conict resolution. The concept of a moving time-window
(decreasing the number of considered aircraft) and the need for computational eciency are the main reasons why local optimization has
been tested in this study.
1.4. Problem description and overview
As already mentioned, the context of this study is the tactical planning phase. The aim here is to obtain, from a conicted situation, an
optimal conict-free solution by deviating the trajectories smoothly
and as little as possible.
This paper introduces an original trajectory model using B-splines
and a new semi-innite programming formulation of the separation
constraint involved in air trac conict problems. Another related
contribution consists of a new continuous-optimization formulation
of the tactical conict-resolution problem that involves very few optimization variables: only one real optimization variable per trajectory. Finally, encouraging numerical experiments are obtained using genetic algorithms, a nite-difference interior-point method, and
derivative-free optimization.
The input data of the problem consist of :
1) N: the number of aircraft involved in the conict
i
i : the initial and nal positions of the aircraft i (i =
and end
2) start
1, 2, . . . , N) respectively, as illustrated in Fig. 4.
3) vi : the speed of aircraft i, which is assumed constant.
Note that each piece of trajectory considered is rst to be modelled
by a B-spline, dened by a single continuous parameter. The output

Aircraft 3

3
start

Aircraft 2

1
end

2
start

Aircraft 4
4
start

2
end
4
end

1
start

3
end

Aircraft 1
Fig. 4. A typical input of the problem: one conict involving trajectory segments
(in bold).

should consist of smooth conict-free trajectories, with trajectory i

i
i
to end
at constant speed vi .
going from start
2. B-spline trajectory model and decision variables
The use of smooth trajectories is not possible in todays
operational context as air trac control is currently restricted to trajectories involving linear segments connected with small constantcurvature turns. However, the challenging research projects SESAR
and NextGen consider smooth trajectories as an option for the future
Flight-Management Systems. The ability of future FMS (Flight Management System) to y such trajectories opens new opportunities for
optimization with respect to environmental criterion. In this context,
the use of cubic B-splines (smooth piecewise-cubic polynomials) to
design aircraft trajectories allows one to describe an aircraft trajectory
deviation between the points start and end with a single continuous
parameter. These parameters (one per aircraft) will be the optimization variables in this study. Furthermore, it should be clear that it
is more desirable in practice to use smooth trajectories. This section
describes the main ingredients of B-spline theory in a more general
context.
2.1. Elements of B-spline theory
B-splines are parameterized curves determined by a set of points
called control points. One considers here a set of control points
(Xk , Yk ) R2 . One can dene (s), the B-spline curve determined
by the control points (Xk , Yk ) as follows:

(s) = (x (s), y (s)), s [0, Ncp 1],

where s is the natural parameter of the B-spline, and Ncp is the number
of control points. The B-spline curve is obtained as a linear combination of the B-spline function basis (Bk )k=1,...,Ncp . Each element, Bk , of
the function basis is a cubic-polynomial function. The basis function
B0 is the interpolation natural cubic spline of the following points:
(2, 0),(1, 16 ), (0, 23 ), (1, 16 ), (2, 0) centered on 0, and the remaining
elements of the basis are obtained by simple translations of B0 .

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505

Fig. 5. The four B-spline basis functions relevant for the interval [1, 2].

The B-spline basis functions used to calculate the B-spline curve

(s) for s [1, 2] are the ones with a non-null value on this interval

Moveable Point

End Point

[1, 2] (in bold in Fig. 5). Thus, the unique 2D B-spline curve that is
determined by the Ncp control points (Xk , Yk ) along with three socalled phantom points is given by the following linear combination of
Ncp +1
Ncp +1
the Bk s : x (s) = k=1
Xk Bk (s) and for y (s) = k=1
Yk Bk (s).
The B-spline tting curve is a piecewise cubic polynomial function
of s, where the knots, sk , are the points where the pieces join. Denote

xk ,

dxk d2 xk
, ds2
ds

d3 k

and ds3x respectively the B-spline desired values: the

B-spline desired rst, second and third derivative values for s = sk .
The following requirements yield standard B-spline properties for
unit knot intervals:

Xk+1 + 4Xk + Xk1

,
6
k
Xk+1 Xk1
dx
=
,
ds
2
d2 xk
= Xk+1 2Xk + Xk1 ,
ds2
d3 xk
= Xk+2 3Xk+1 + 3Xk Xk1 .
ds3

Start Point
Fig. 6. A B-spline trajectory determined by three control points.

xk =

(1)

Since the Taylors expansion is exact for polynomials (providing

enough terms are taken) one then obtains the B-spline value for all
s [sk , sk+1 ]:

x (s) = xk + (s sk )
+

(s sk )

dxk
(s sk )2 d2 xk
+
ds
2
ds2

d xk
.
ds3

B-spline tting is a very ecient tool for trajectory modelling

in terms of both tting quality and computational time. Moreover,
B-splines feature interesting properties such as C 2 -continuity, which
is crucial for modelling yable smooth aircraft trajectories. In addition, a very attractive property is the fact that, by construction, the


B-splines minimize the quantities: (x (s))2 ds and (y (s))2 ds. This
is important in an operational context as it induces low energy consumption and passenger comfort.
B-splines have already been used in trajectory optimization and
one can nd an example in Milam, Mushambi and Murray (2000).
2.2. Optimization variables dening the trajectories

(2)

Higher-degree derivatives are zeros, as x (s) is a cubic B-spline. As

we use three control points (start and end and one movable, (u)),
there are three knots, inducing two sub-intervals. The trajectory (s)
is represented on the interval [0, 2] and on the two sub-intervals
[0, 1] and [1, 2]. For more details, the B-spline theory is described, for
example, in Duncan (2005).
In the following, the indices i and j will be used to determine the
considered aircraft, and k will be used to determine the considered
control point. Thus, i stands for the trajectory of the ith aircraft, and
k for the value of at the knot sk for the considered trajectory.

In this study, one models a trajectory with a cubic B-spline dened by three control points: the start and end points (given input
data), plus a middle control point (Fig. 6). This middle control point
is called the movable control point, as it will be used to deviate the
trajectory. The exact position of this control point will be monitored
by a single real-valued parameter. The vector of decision variables
of the optimization problem we are about to dene will be made of
these real-valued parameters.
One wants a compromise between allowing the trajectory to
deviate freely (in any direction) from the direct route in order to
avoid conicts, and staying as close as possible to the direct route.
For that purpose, one denes a xed maximal bandwidth (interval

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C. Peyronne et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 241 (2015) 502512

3. Optimization problem formulation

i(ui)
Dmax

The problem consists in designing, if possible, an optimal conictfree situation. This section proposes an optimization formulation of
this problem whose constraints will require that there is no conict.
The objective function of the problem can be dened in several ways:
one can consider minimizing the total deviation distance or total fuel
consumption for instance. This paper concentrates on nding conictfree trajectories that minimize the average total deviation distance
(with respect to the direct routes). The formulation presented can
easily be adapted to other objective functions.

d
i
start

pimid

i
end

Dinit
Fig. 7. Direct route, maximal deviation bandwidth and modied trajectory.

3.1. Formulation
[Dmax , Dmax ]) that depends on the direct route length (Dinit ). The
trajectory will be imposed to stay within the maximal bandwidth
(see Fig. 7).
The middle control point coordinates corresponding to the
trajectory of aircraft i (i = 1, 2, . . . , N) is denoted i (ui ). Its exact position will be determined using the parameter ui which will represent
d
(percent), where
a bandwidth proportion. It is dened as: ui = Dmax

Dmax = Dinit , d is the distance between the control point i (ui ) and
the direct route for aircraft i, and is a user-dened proportion. In
the numerical tests, is set to 0.3, so as to expect a maximal distance
increase of about 10 percent from the original trajectory (this was
observed empirically).
The optimization variable of the problem is therefore the vector
u whose ith component is that percentage ui corresponding to trajectory i = 1, 2, . . . , N. The search space is therefore the hypercube
[100, 100]N .
In order to calculate the deviation of each aircraft (which will be
required for computing the objective function of the optimization
formulation of the next section), one must rst build the trajectories
driven by the above-dened control points. From a given deviation
percentage vector, u, one calculates the control point locations, and
the B-splines driven by them. In order to illustrate this, consider the
trajectory of a single aircraft, i. First, let us dene the direction vector
i
i
i := end
start
of the ith direct route. The middle of the original
trajectory direct route is called the site and is denoted by pimid . The
middle control point i is placed on the line orthogonal to the direct
route and intersecting the direct route at pimid (see Fig. 7). In other
words,

1
i
= start
+ i.
2

pimid

(3)

The vector of norm Dimax (maximal deviation bandwidth of the ith

aircraft) that is orthogonal to the direct route, and, by convention,
oriented toward the left of the aircraft trajectory, is denoted by qi
R2 . More precisely, it is obtained by solving the system:

( i )T qi = 0
||q || =
i

Dimax .

(4)

The rst line of this system ensures the orthogonality between q and ,
while the second line denes the length of q. Solving this system leads
to two possible vectors q. To choose between those two possibilities,
we dene a convention stating that qi should be oriented toward the
left of the original trajectory. Consequently, if ui > 0, the ith aircraft
will turn left. Hence, one can write the following relation between the
control point i (u) and the ith optimization variable ui corresponding
to aircraft i:

i (ui ) = pimid + ui qi .

(5)

i
Thus, given ui , one knows the three required control points (start
,
i
i (ui ) and end
), and can compute the B-spline dening the ith aircraft
trajectory.

A new idea introduced in this paper is to consider the continuous

separation distance as a constraint, making the approach more direct
than previous methods that rely on a discretization of the trajectories,
not only for numerical purposes but in the actual formulation of the
problem to be solved. However, this constraint must be respected at
all times, leading to an innite number of constraints. As described
above, one uses u, the vector containing all the middle control point
locations, ui , i = 1, 2, . . . , N as the optimization variable.
Let f (u) be the objective function representing the average travelled distance for every aircraft (details are given in Section 3.2), which
is written as follows:

f (u) =

N
1 i
f (ui ),
N

(6)

i=1

where f i (ui ) is related to the travelled distance of the aircraft i

following its modied trajectory. This function is further explained
in Section 3.2.
In order to guarantee a conict-free situation, one must ensure
that all aircraft are, at least, := 5 nautical miles away from each
other (in practice, = 5.001 is taken to give a margin tolerance).
The separation-norm constraint can be expressed explicitly by imposing, for any pair of aircraft i and j whose trajectories are denoted
respectively i (ui ; s) and j (uj ; s):

cij (u; t) :=  i (ui ; s(t)) j (uj ; s(t))22 2 ,

ij
t [0, tmin
], (7)

i ,t
i
where tmin := min(tend
), with tend
is the arrival time of aircraft i
end
ij

to its end point iend . The natural spline parameter, s, and the time, t,
are related by the following bijective relation between s and t:

s(t) = 1 (ui ; t) and t = (ui ; s),

where (ui ; s) =


 s  dx (ui , ) 2
0

(8)
 dx (ui , ) 2
d

d relates time and the

natural spline parameter, s, through the arc-length closed-form expression.

Therefore, the problem can be formulated as:

1 i

f (u) =
f (ui )
min
u
N
i=1

s.t.
cij (u; t) 2

ij
t [0, tmin
];

i = 1, . . . , N 1;
j = i + 1, . . . , N.

(9)

In order to compute cij (u; t), one needs to evaluate i (ui ; s(t)) and
j (uj ; s(t)) at time t. This is achieved in practice by sampling the
trajectory in time, noting that one has for each s, the values (xi , yi , di , t),
where di is the distance travelled by aircraft i whose co-ordinates are

(xi , yi ) at time t. These values are sampled with respect to time, using

linear interpolations (di and t are exact; and xi and yi are approximated
via sampling).

C. Peyronne et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 241 (2015) 502512

507

> 5Nm

3.2. The objective function and its derivatives

In this sub-section, the objective function is dened and closedform expressions of the objective-function derivatives with respect
to the optimization variables are obtained. Recall that the objectivefunction is expressed in (6), and that the optimization variables
are meant to describe the middle control-point locations ( i (ui ) =
pimid + ui qi ).
Since f i (u) depends only on the ith u component, the ith partial
derivatives of the objective-function is:

1 f i
f
=
.
ui N ui
As described in the previous section, each trajectory
i can be rep (u ;s)
, where
resented by a parametric curve in R2 : i (ui ; s) =: xi i
y (ui ;s)

s [0, 2] (= [0, Ncp 1]), and it is dened by a B-spline driven by

three control points corresponding to s {0, 1, 2}.
To dene the objective function, let us dene:

T (ui ) :=

and,

T (ui ) :=



2


 d i (u ; s) 2
dyi (ui ; s)
i
x

+
ds.
ds
ds


dxi (ui ; s)
ds

2


+

dyi (ui ; s)

2

ds

ds.

(10)

The former gives the total distance travelled by the aircraft i while the
latter represents an energy. Minimizing the energy T i also minimizes
T i , therefore, one can rather minimize Ti in order to avoid the square
root (see, for example do Carmo 1992, pp. 190200). We choose the
total energy rather than the travelled distance as a criterion in order
to ease the derivatives calculation.
In order to have a normalized objective function f (u), one denes
the functions f i (ui ) [0, 1] as follows:

f i (ui ) =

T i (ui ) T i (0)
.
T i (1) T i (0)

(11)

A tedious calculation, detailed in Appendix A, yields the closed-form

derivatives, for i = 1, . . . , N:

32  i 2  i 2 
1
i
ui qx + qy
.
f = i
ui
T (1) T i (0) 15
3.3. The constraint functions
Inspired by Conn and Gould (1987) and Visweswariah, Haring and
Conn (2000), one can reformulate the constraint function cij as:

C (u) =

max{ c (u; t); 0}dt = 0.

2

with
ij :=
ij

ij

2 cij (u; t) dt,

ij

time intervals. Since there is only one movable control point for each
trajectory (which means an aircraft cannot do more than one turn),
there can only be at most = 2 violating time intervals for each pair of
aircraft (see Fig. 8). Consequently, without loss of generality, one can
assume there are at most three possible congurations corresponding
to = 0, 1, 2 depending on the situation. A situation with conicts
corresponds to violating intervals.
Standard optimization methods commonly require providing the
objective-function and constraint derivatives. No satisfying results
have been obtained for the computation of the constraint derivatives
although we are working on such an improvement (and have successfully provided derivatives for the objective function). Thus, in this
study, when constraint derivatives will be required by an optimization method, we shall be content with nite-difference gradients.
4. Optimization methods
This section details the different optimization methods applied to
the problem. First, a genetic optimization method (GA) is used to handle the combinatorial aspect of the problem, as this optimization approach is the most used for conict resolution problems. One can next
take advantage of the fact that the B-spline trajectory model allows
one to apply a standard local continuous optimization method such as
interior-point methods. Finally, because of the relatively large number of function evaluations required for the use of nite-difference
approximations of the gradients, it is natural to try one of the modern
derivative-free optimization method.

ij

Doing so, one transforms the semi-innite constraints (each conij

straints is dened over a time interval [0, tmin ]) into a single equality constraint (see also Stein 2012 for a more theoretical survey of
semi-innite optimization). This constraint ensures that the separation norm is respected between aircraft i and j. Indeed, if, for some pair
of aircraft (i, j), there is a conict, then cij (u; t) > 0 during some
time interval, leading to a non-zero integral (constraint violation).
One can rewrite C ij (u) as:

C ij (u) =

Fig. 8. Different trajectory congurations leading at most to: zero conict (left), one
conict (center), and two conicts (right).

4.1. Genetic algorithm and problem-specic genetic operators

ij

tmin

ij

> 5Nm

ij

(12)

ij

[tin , tout ], where the union is over each time interval

[tin , tout ] during which the aircraft i and j are in conict (violat
ing the separation constraint), and where is the number of such

The rst optimization method considered to solve the problem is

genetic algorithms (GA; Goldberg, 1989). We emphasize that this is
also a contribution of this paper since we use the formulation (9).
Our implementation of GA selects the best individuals of the population at each iteration using a deterministic (, )-tournament selection which randomly selects individuals and keeps the best
elements, where > are user-dened parameters. This step is repeated until a new intermediate population is completed. Genetic
operators (crossover, mutation or nothing) are then applied with
specied user-dened probabilities (noted respectively pc , pm and,
1 pc pm ). Ultimately, one obtains the next generation of chromosomes. This generational process is repeated until some user-dened
termination condition has been reached. In this study, a maximal
number of generations is imposed.
The chromosome encoding used here represents the trajectories
of N aircraft using a vector of N real numbers (the ui s, see Fig. 9).

508

C. Peyronne et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 241 (2015) 502512

Aircraft 1

u1

Aircraft 2

u2

...

...

where is a penalization parameter, weighting the importance of

feasibility with respect to optimality, set empirically by the user.
This penalty function is also invoked in order to enable the use
of the derivative-free optimization method BOBYQA described in
Section 4.2.1.

Aircraft 19 u19
Aircraft 20 u20

4.2. Local optimization method

Fig. 9. Chromosome encoding for a 20-aircraft instance.

This section details briey the local optimization methods applied

and the reasons why they were chosen.

It respects the locality principle: two individuals close to each other

in the search space represent close solutions. The crossover operator
is used to mix the features of two good individuals (good from the
point of view of candidates for improving upon the current solution),
called parents, from the previous generation. It consists of picking
the most conicted aircraft of each parent (more precisely, we seek

for the highest value of j=i C ij (u) among all aircraft i = 1, . . . , N), say
aircraft i for one parent and aircraft j for the other, and of modifying
its B-spline trajectory over [s0 , s2 ] using a barycentric transformation
of the two parents corresponding movable control point (Fig. 10).
The crossover results in two children that are expected to yield local
improvement.
The mutation operator, used to diversify the genes in the population in order to explore widely the search space, consists, in this
application context, of choosing randomly one movable control point
and to assign to it a new value chosen randomly (using a uniform
distribution) in the interval (percent) [100; 100] (see Fig. 11).
Finally, the tness, which quanties the ability of an individual to
solve the problem is dened as follows:

f (u) =

N
N 
N

1 i
f (ui ) +
C ij (u),
N
i=1

(13)

i=1 j=1

Parent 2

4.2.1. Derivative-free optimization

The lack of closed-form expressions of the constraint derivatives naturally leads to derivative-free optimization methods (Conn,
Scheinberg & Vicente, 2009). The method chosen here is Powells
BOBYQA (Bound Optimization BY Quadratic Approximation; Powell,
2009), one of the most effective derivative-free optimization methods
available. It is based on a trust-region model described in Chapter 10
of Conn et al. (2009). Note that this class of methods does not handle constraints directly (except for simple bounds). Consequently, the
penalized objective function dened in (13) is used.
For our numerical experiments, we use all the default values
proposed in Powell (2009) for the various parameters dening the
method.
4.2.2. Local differentiable optimization
In fact, a closed-form expressions of the derivatives of the objective function can be obtained here (this calculation is detailed in
Appendix A). One can therefore consider applying a standard local
differentiable optimization method. We choose constrained interiorpoint methods because they are state-of-the-art methods for nonlinear programming. The numerical experiments are conducted using the Matlab routine fmincon (Byrd, Gilbert & Nocedal, 2000). The

Parent 2

CROSSOVER

Child 1

CROSSOVER

Child 2

Fig. 10. Parent chromosomes and children obtained via a barycentric transformation (averaging the chosen bandwidth percentage) and their corresponding trajectories.

MUTATION

MUTATION

Fig. 11. Initial and mutated chromosome and their corresponding trajectories.

C. Peyronne et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 241 (2015) 502512

509

gradient of the objective function is supplied to this routine. However, the derivatives of the constraint functions (12) (which are not
trivial to obtain) are approximated automatically by fmincon using
nite differences. Current work aims at obtaining a closed form of the
gradient of the constraint functions.
Here again, we use in our tests the default values provided by
Matlab for the various parameters involved in the algorithm.
5. Numerical results
This section presents comparative numerical results obtained with
the different optimization methods proposed above. First, an academic test problem, called the roundabout, is presented. Then, a more
realistic problem (so-called operational-like test problem) is proposed.
Although rather articial, both test problems feature some operational aspects of real-life problems and thereby allows one to test the
viability of our methodology.
The results we obtain with GA are used as a reference. Indeed,
we expect GA, considering its ergodicity property, to be able to reach
the neighborhood of any desired point of the search space within the
(large) number of iterations allowed. Consequently, with a signicant
number of function evaluations, we expect GA to nd a solution whose
value is relatively close to the optimal value. Moreover, GA is known
to be t to handle the air trac conict problem (Mdioni et al.,
1994), which makes it a good reference to compare with the results
of our local optimization approach. To summarize, we shall compare
the results we obtain with local optimization method with (fmincon)
and without derivatives (BOBYQA), to the ones we obtain with our
GA implementation.
The proposed genetic algorithm is implemented in Java. As
mentioned above, the differentiable local optimization method used
is the routine fmincon from the Matlab Optimization toolbox. The
derivative-free optimization method BOBYQA is coded in fortran 77
and is called from Matlab via a mex interface. As a consequence of
this difference in programming language, computational time cannot
be considered as an objective comparison criterion. We rather rely
here on comparing the number of function evaluations, which represents most of the computational time spent by the optimization
methods. This corresponds to common practice in black-box optimization where the objective and/or constraint functions are costly
to evaluate. However, in order to give an idea of the order of computation time involved, let us simply present the calculation time for one
evaluation of both the objective and constraint functions for a same
point, and on a same trac situation. In both cases (Java and Matlab),
we use a 2.53 GHz processor Intel Core 2 Duo on a Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
operating system. Using Java, one evaluation requires 7 milliseconds
while with Matlab, it needs 26 milliseconds.
Here are the parameter values used to implement the different
above-mentioned algorithms:
1) Population size: 100; number of generations: 100 (hence GA will
evaluate 10,000 times the objective and constraint functions)
2) Mutation probability: pm = 0.3
3) Crossover probability: pc = 0.6
4) Constraint penalization parameter: = 0.01
5) Stopping criterion of the local optimization methods: ||uk+1
uk || < 106
6) Approximate global optimization value tolerance for GA f f <
f := 104 , for feasible solutions, where f is the best solution
value found by GA. This f value will be used as a comparative
quality criterion in the numerical results.
The local optimization methods fmincon and BOBYQA start with
the best feasible point from 100 randomly-generated points from
the search space ([1, 1]N ). These 100 extra function evaluations
are taken into account in the function-call counts for these methods

Fig. 12. Roundabout test problem conguration for N = 6 aircraft.

(in a suitable parallel environment, choosing many different starting

points could be relatively inexpensive).
5.1. Roundabout test problem
First, a simple but dicult academic test with conict situations,
that is widely used for air trac conict problems, is considered. Each
instance of the roundabout problem involves N aircraft uniformly
distributed on a circle of radius 100 nautical miles. Each of the N
aircraft ies to the diametrically opposed point at a common speed
(for N even, each point on the circle has an outgoing and an incoming
trajectory, see Fig. 12).
This problem is convenient to test conict-resolution methods because, due to its symmetry, there is an expected solution. Indeed, air
trac controller common practice would then make all the aircraft
involved in the conict turn to the same side. In the sequel, this obvious solution is referred to as a global solution of the problem. This test
problem is widely used because automatic air trac conict resolution algorithms are not designed to take advantage of this particular
symmetry.
The roundabout test problems considered here involve successively N = 2, 4, 6, 8, and 16 aircraft. Recall that the chosen start
point of the local optimization methods is the best point among a
100 randomly-generated points of [1, 1]N . GA initial population will
also be randomly generated in [1, 1]N .
The computational results obtained with the three optimization
approaches (GA, fmincon, and BOBYQA) on this academic problem
reveals that:
1) GA and BOBYQA always (for N = 2, 4, 6, 8, and 16) nds a global
minimum (all aircraft turn to the same side).
2) For N = 2, fmincon always nds a global optimum.
3) For N = 4, fmincon nds a local minimum for which objectivefunction value vary in [f , 3 f ] depending on the chosen starting
point.
4) For N = 6 fmincon nds a local minimum for which objectivefunction value vary in [f , 8 f ].
5) For N = 8 and 16 aircraft, a local optimum is not always found with
fmincon, depending on the chosen starting point.

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C. Peyronne et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 241 (2015) 502512

Fig. 13. Operational-like test problem conguration for N = 6 aircraft.

No further detail is given as this is an academic problem that does not

correspond to real-world problems.

5.2. Operational-like test problem

In order to create test problems that are more realistic, an
operational-like test problem can be created by introducing some
perturbations in the roundabout test problem. This study is limited
to conicted situations involving N = 6 aircraft, as according to air
trac controller experience, conicts involving more than four aircraft are not typical in en-route trac (only one four-aircraft conict
happens over France each year). For each aircraft, one randomly displaces (or not) the position of the start and end points on the circle
by 20 to obtain a conict situation involving various crossing angles,
losing thereby the special symmetry of the roundabout test problem
(see Fig. 13). A randomly-generated speed vi [550; 650] knots (nautical miles per hour) is assigned to each aircraft i, i = 1, . . . , N, during
the generation of the test-cases (for the academic roundabout test
problem, the speed of each aircraft was vi = 600 knots). Following
this methodology, 100 different instances were generated. Each optimization method is applied to these 100 instances in order to make
an elementary statistically-valid comparative study.

To compare the results of the different methods on these 100

instances, GA results are taken as a reference, as, with 10,000 function evaluations, it is expected to nd a (nearly) globally optimal value
f for each of these instances. Several criteria are taken into account.
First, the percentage of success of the local optimization method is
reported (whether it converges to a locally-optimal solution or
whether it fails). The objective-value statistics (mean, median, worst,
best) are taken over the 100 instance runs. For each instance, the difference in the objective-function values is calculated with respect to
f when the local method converges to a feasible solution. The best
(respectively worst) objective-function value differences with respect
to f presented in the table correspond to instances for which fmincon and BOBYQA performed the best (respectively worst). Finally, the
statistics on the number of function evaluations required to converge
are displayed. The results are summarized in Table 1.
The percentage of success for the local optimization methods
is high. This shows that local optimization methods are a viable
alternative for automatic conict resolution. The objective-function
difference reveals that a local method can even nd better feasible
objective function values than genetic algorithms. More precisely,
fmincon obtains better results (in terms of the objective-function
value) than GA in 48 instances (over the 95 solutions fmincon nds),
which is very promising. BOBYQA obtains better results (again, in
terms of the objective-function value) than GA for 23 instances,
which is still signicant. A discussion on the corresponding number of function evaluations is given below. Of course, in the remaining cases, the local methods converged to high (i.e. bad) objectivefunction values (local minima) when compared with GA, which is
why there is a discrepancy between the median and the average of the
objective-function value difference (a gap of 0.30 can be considered as
signicantly bad).
As mentioned previously, GA performs 10,000 function
evaluations here, although it nds a feasible (conict-free) solution
before. After how many function evaluations does GA nd such a
feasible solution? The rst conict-free solution is discovered by
GA quickly (110 evaluations on average, roughly equivalent to the
pure random-search starting-point strategy of fmincon and BOBYQA).
However, such feasible solutions are of poor quality. In any case,
the global optimum found by GA requires much more time to be
found with an f precision (6 times the average number of function
evaluations needed by fmincon, and 15 times for BOBYQA). The local optimization methods are therefore more ecient than GA for
nding a feasible solution in terms of computational time for comparable quality. We remark however that GA seems to be more stable than fmincon, as it nds feasible solutions for 98 out of the
100 test cases, and the two cases where GA does not nd a feasible solution, the GA solution is close to being feasible (the constraint violation is of order 102 , when, for fmincon infeasible solution, the violation is signicantly larger). However, BOBYQA is the
most stable methods among these three as it always nd a feasible
solution.

Table 1
Comparative numerical results over the 100 instances.
GA
Feasibility success rate (percent)
Average objective-function value
Median objective-function value
Objective-function value difference with respect to f

Number of function evaluations

Mean
Median
Worst
Best
Mean
Median
Worst
Best

fmincon
98
0.044
0.044

10000
10000
10000
10000

95
0.049
0.070
0.029
0.006
0.34
0.054
1135
820
6825
178

BOBYQA
100
0.091
0.11
0.067
0.047
0.29
0.069
400
393
1033
194

C. Peyronne et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 241 (2015) 502512

Finally, note that the number of functions reported for fmincon is

strongly impacted by the fact that it relies on nite-difference constraint gradients (in N dimensions, each nite-difference gradient
approximation requires N + 1 function evaluations, and gradients are
needed at least once at every iteration). Indeed, the average number of iterations is only 54. Once the constraint gradients will be
computed (current research work), one can expect a much lower
number of function evaluations for local differentiable optimization
methods.

511

Let us begin with the case for which s [s0 , s1 ] := [0, 1]. Using (2)
with k = 0, one obtains:

xi (ui ; s) = x0 + (s s0 )
+

dx0
(s s0 )2 d2 x0
+
ds
2
ds2

(s s0 )3 d3 x0
ds3

To calculate our B-spline for s [0, 2], ve control points are used: the
phantom point X1 := 2X0 X1 = 2X0 (pimid + ui qix ), the starting
x

point X0 := startx , the movable control point X1 := xi (ui ) = pimid +

x

6. Conclusion
Standard approaches to air trac conict resolution problems
rely on discretization of the search space yielding a combinatorial
optimization formulation of the problem and, thereby, computationintensive optimization methods must be used. This paper shows that
the use of an original B-spline trajectory model involving only one
continuous variable per aircraft, and of a semi-innite programming
formulation of the separation constraints, permits one to obtain good
results via local optimization methods. A major advantage of a local
optimization methods is that it requires much fewer (costly) function
evaluations. Moreover, in a safety operational context, competent
authorities may prefer decision-aid tools based on a deterministic
optimization methods with an underlying convergence theory and a
more ecient use of function evaluations.
Note that the optimization formulation introduced here involves
only differentiable functions. Also, one expects that, ultimately, it
will not be necessary to rely either on derivative-free optimization methods, or on nite-difference variants of classical differentiable local optimization methods. Current work concentrates on
computing closed-form constraint derivatives in order to decrease
signicantly the computational time required by local optimization
methods. Finally, the elementary random-search start-point selection step combined here with the local optimization method could
be replaced with a more adapted hybrid two-phase (global/local)
method.

ui qix , the ending point X2 := endx and the second phantom point
X3 := 2endx (pimid + ui qix ). To compute on each interval [sk , sk+1 ],
x
the B-spline method uses four control points Xk1 , Xk , Xk+1 , Xk+2 . In
our case, when s [s0 , s1 ] = [0, 1] (i.e. for k = 0), the B-spline computation uses X1 , X0 , X1 , and X2 , and when s [s1 , s2 ] = [1, 2] (i.e.
for k = 1), the computation uses X0 , X1 , X2 , and X3 . The dependencies in ui are determined accordingly. In the following, for notational
simplicity, we will use X0 for startx , and X2 for endx . Thus, for all
s [s0 , s1 ] = [0, 1], one has:

 s3

.
+ X2 2pimidx 2ui qix + X0
6
Then, one can obviously deduce, by differentiating the expression
above, that, for all s [s0 , s1 ]:

 
 s2
dxi (ui ; s)  i
= pmidx + ui qix X0 + X2 2pimidx 2ui qix + X0
.
ds
2
Consequently, for all s [s0 , s1 ]:

dxi (ui ; s)
ds

2


2
= pimidx + ui qix X0
2
s4 
X2 2pimidx 2ui qix + X0
4


+ s2 pimidx + ui qix X0


X2 2pimidx 2ui qix + X0 .
+

Acknowledgments
This work has been supported by French National Research Agency
(ANR) through COSINUS program (project ID4CS no. ANR-09-COSI005) and through JCJC program (project ATOMIC no. ANR 12-JS02009-01). The authors are indebted to Professor Stphane Puechmorel
for his help on the calculation and computation of the derivatives,
and to Laurent Lapasset for interesting discussions on the operational
aspects of the problem. The authors are grateful to two anonymous
reviewers for many detailed and helpful comments.

xi (ui ; s) = X0 + pimidx + ui qix X0 s

s
 dxi (ui ;s) 2  dyi (ui ;s) 2
It is necessary to calculate the integral 0 max
+
ds
ds
ds
in order to obtain T i . As mentioned before, only the terms in xi are
detailed, and, in this part, the calculation focuses on the interval where
s [0, 1]:

1
0

dxi (ui ; s)
ds

2


ds =

1
0

2
 i
pmidx + ui qix X0

2
s4 
X2 2pimidx 2ui qix + X0
4


+ s2 pimidx + ui qix X0



X2 2pimidx 2ui qix + X0 ds
+

Appendix A. Objective-function derivatives

Recall that the expression for the objective function is given by
i
, i (ui )
(6), (10) and (11), and that given a control point list, start
i
and end , the x components of the B-spline approximation associated
with movable control point (ui ) for aircraft i is given by xi (ui ; s).
For notational simplicity, in the sequel, the aircraft index i is dropped
in the notation, except on the optimization variable ui , with respect
to which we differentiate. Moreover, the factor i 1 i , being a


2
= pimidx + ui qix X0


1 X2
X0 2
pimidx ui qix +
+
5 2
2

1 i
+ pmidx + ui qix X0
3


X2 2pimidx 2ui qix + X0 .

T (1)T (0)

normalization constant, it is not included in the following calculation.

Each term in the integral (in the expression of T i (ui )) can be considered
separately. The calculation is only detailed for the term involving xi .
Using the Taylors expansion expressed in Eq. (2), one can obtain
xi (ui ; s) for each s in the interval [sk , sk+1 ]. This Taylors expansion is
exact as the B-spline curve xi (ui ; s) is a third-degree polynomial.
The trajectory model involves three control points and two phantom control points. Thus, the B-spline is to be expressed on two
intervals, [s0 , s1 ] and [s1 , s2 ].

Then, differentiating the above expression with respect to ui ,

one obtains the closed-form expression of the integral for
s [s0 , s1 ] := [0, 1] :

ui

1
0

dxi (ui ; s)
ds

2


ds = qix


 6
2
16  i
pmidx + ui qix X0 +
X2 .
15
5
15

512

C. Peyronne et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 241 (2015) 502512


 6
2
16  i
pmidy + ui qiy Y0 +
Y2
15
5
15




2
6
16
+ qiy
pimidy + ui qiy +
Y0 Y2
15
15
5

32
32 i  i
q p
qi (pi
+ ui qix +
+ ui qiy )
=
15 x midx
15 y midy
16 i
16 i
q (X2 + X0 )
q (Y2 + Y0 )

15 x
15 y

The calculation now concentrates on the interval where s

[s1 , s2 ] (k = 1). Using Taylors expansion (2) on this interval,
one obtains:

+ qiy

dx1 (s1 ) (s s1 )2 d2 x1 (s1 )

+
ds
2
ds2
3 1
d x (s1 )
.
ds3

xi (u; s) = x1 (s1 ) + (s s1 )
+

(s s1 )3
6

Now, this value has to be calculated for s [s1 , s2 ] = [1, 2], where the
optimized control point is Xk = pmidx + ui qx . Consequently, due to the
change of k from 0 to 1 for this interval, one has: Xk1 := X0 = startx ;
Xk+1 := X2 = endx ; Xk+2 := 2X2 pmidx ui qx . Thus, we obtain for all
s [1, 2]:

i
x

 (s 1)
1
(ui ; s) = X2 + 4pimidx + 4ui qix + X0 +
(X2 X0 )
6
2

(s 1)2 
X2 2pimidx 2ui qix + X0
+
2

(s 1)3  i
+
2pmidx + 2ui qix X2 X0 .
6

Differentiating with respect to s, one obtains for all s [1, 2]:



1
dxi (ui ; s)
= (X2 X0 ) + (s 1) X2 2pimidx 2ui qix + X0
ds
2

(s 1)2  i
2pmidx + 2ui qix X2 X0 ,
(A.1)
+
2
and therefore,

dxi (ui ; s)
ds

2
=



1
(X2 X0 )2 + (s 1)2 X2 2pimidx 2ui qix + X0 2
4

(s 1)4 

2
2pimidx + 2ui qix X2 X0
4


+ (s 1)(X2 X0 ) X2 2pimidx 2ui qix + X0
+

(s 1)2



(X2 X0 ) 2pimidx + 2ui qix X2 X0
2


+ (s 1)3 2pimidx + 2ui qix X2 X0


X2 2pimidx 2ui qix + X0 .
+

Integrating this value over [1, 2] yields:

 dxi (ui ; s) 2
ds

ds =


1
1
(X2 X0 )2 + X2 2pimidx 2ui qix + X0 2
4
3
2
1  i
2pmidx + 2ui qix X2 X0
+
20


1
+ (X2 X0 ) X2 2pimidx 2ui qix + X0
2


1
+ (X2 X0 ) 2pimidx + 2ui qix X2 X0
6

1
+ 2pimidx + 2ui qix X2 X0
4


X2 2pimidx 2ui qix + X0 .

One then differentiates with respect to ui :

ui

2
1

dxi (ui ; s)
ds

2


ds = qix


2
6
16 i
(pmidx + ui qix ) + X0 X2 .
15
15
5

As mentioned earlier, similar formulas can be obtained for the

terms in yi . Thus, the exact formula for the objective-function derivative is written as follows:

 6
2
16  i
i
f (ui ) = qix
+ ui qix X0 +
p
X2
ui
15 midx
5
15


+ qix


2
6
16  i
p
X0 X 2
+ ui qix +
15 midx
15
5

Finally, since by construction, we have pimid =

Y2 +Y0
2 ,

X2 +X0
2 ,

and pimid =
y

the ith component of the gradient vector i f (u) is:

1
32  i 2  i 2 

ui qx + qy
f (u) =
.
ui
N(T i (1) T i (0)) 15
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