Lanzarote launches a new radar. ENAIRE, manager of air navigation in Spain, has put into service on Monday a new “state-of-the-art” radar on the island of Lanzarote that “allows coverage and surveillance service for flights from the northeastern area of the Canary Islands, as well as to the traffic between the islands and the Peninsula “.
Specifically, the new radar, which serves the ENAIRE Air Control Center in the Canary Islands, has involved an investment of more than 2.5 million euros. In addition, it provides coverage to the aircraft that take off and land from the airports of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura.
According to the Ministry of Development in a statement, in total, will control the airspace in a radius of about 250 nautical miles, the equivalent of an area of about 670,000 square kilometers.
The radar in Lanzarote comes to replace the previous civil radar, installed at the beginning of the year 2000, in the same plot of the Peak of Peñas del Chache, property of the Ministry of Defense.
As ENAIRE points out, “this new radar is located in a sustainable construction made of volcanic stone” and “the brown color of the radome contributes to reduce the environmental impact of the installation”.
“It is a secondary radar and is equipped with digital receivers and Mode S technology, which allows for more information about the aircraft that are flying, managing traffic more smoothly and increasing security,” he adds.
This type of radars are used for tracking and monitoring traffic since they provide information regarding the position of each aircraft, its identification and the altitude at which it flies, facilitating the location of all the traffic that operates in its area of reach.
The secondary surveillance radar Mode S represents an improvement over the monopulse secondary radar used so far . This new radar uses the same frequencies but has the capacity to perform selective interrogations, which reduces radioelectric contamination.
This radar joins the other four Mode S radars already installed in the Canary Islands (Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura and La Palma and Tenerife South) completing the coverage in the eastern part of the archipelago.
Of the available technologies to improve the performance of the Spanish surveillance system, Mode S is “the most mature and implemented”. “This installation contributes to the international positioning of ENAIRE as an aerial navigation manager in the field of surveillance, in line with the European requirements to progressively introduce new technologies that improve air traffic management in Europe,” explains the operator.
In addition, the radar of Peñas del Chache incorporates a redundant station of Automatic Dependent Monitoring Radiodifundida (ADS-B), which allows to obtain the position of aircraft through the information they disseminate their on-board sensors. This functionality allows to continue having information of vigilance against mechanical failures of the radar station.
This ADS-B station has been co-financed under the “Connect Europe” Mechanism of the INEA agency of the European Union, within a project of implementation of ADS-B surveillance presented by the Spanish air navigation service providers (ENAIRE) and Portuguese (NAV Portugal).
ENAIRE is the company of the Development Group that manages air navigation in Spain. It provides aerodrome control service in 21 airports, among them the busiest traffic and control on route and approach, through five control centers: Barcelona, Madrid, Gran Canaria, Palma and Seville.
In 2018, ENAIRE handled 2.1 million flights with origin and destination on 4 continents (Europe, America, Asia and Africa), which transported 300 million passengers
