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The CAT-10 Plugin

Witness Canary supports integration with many different types of external systems through the use of plugins. These are stand-alone software libraries which are dynamically loaded by Canary and contain code which knows how to convert the Witness data into the required format for the external system. Navtech Radar can easily develop bespoke plugins to interface with a specific type of equipment or application. The Asterix CAT-10 plugin has been developed to provide integration to a common standard using in Airport system communication.

The Asterix plugin file is entitled Witness.Plugin.CAT10.dll and must be present in the Witness Plugin folder which is inside the main application folder. 

Configuring the CAT-10 Plugin

When the plugin is installed and Canary starts, the plugin configuration settings are saved to the PluginConfiguration.xml file. This file is located in the Witness main application folder. To change the settings this file should be opened in a text editor, such as Notepad, however we would recommend an editor which is XML aware, such as Notepad++.

Once the file is open, locate the CAT10 section, as illustrated below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Config>
  <Plugins>
    <CAT10>
      <PluginConfig>
        <TimerTick>500</TimerTick>
        <SystemIdentificationCode>1</SystemIdentificationCode>
        <UdpServer RemoteIPAddress="239.192.86.0" Enabled="True" Port="8600" />
        <SendCAT10>True</SendCAT10>
        <ListenCAT10>True</ListenCAT10>
        <CAT10SourcePositions>
			<SourcePositions>
				<Sic>23</Sic>
				<Sac>0</Sac>
				<X>10</X>
				<Y>49</Y>
				</SourcePositions>
		</CAT10SourcePositions>
        <HeartbeatInterval>0</HeartbeatInterval>
		<BufferTracks>False</BufferTracks>
      </PluginConfig>
    </CAT10>
  </Plugins>
</Config>

The setting options are as follows:

TimerTick

Timer used to control sending status messages and cleaning up buffers in milliseconds. A CAT-10 status message is sent on this timer if Sending CAT10 is enabled.

SystemIdentificationCode

Unique number identifying the Witness system in an Asterix network. SIC Must be smaller or equal to 255. Witness cannot share a SIC with another system.

UdpServer

• Enabled - Should always be set to true
• RemoteIPAddress - The IP address used for clients to access the UDP data. Only Multicast IPs (starting in range 224 to 239) are supported.
• Port - The port used for the UDP communications.
  

SendCAT10

• True - Sends all confirmed tracks in Witness as CAT-10 messages to the UdpServer address.
• False - Tracks are not sent out.

ListenCAT10

• True - Listens to CAT-10 messages on the udpserver address and port and inserts tracks detected as friendly tracks into Witness.
• False - Does not listen to CAT-10 messages.

One or both of ListenCAT10 or SendCAT10 should be true.

CAT10SourcePositions

Source positions are used to configure displacements of origins between systems.

• List of displacement locations based on system SIC and SAC for other systems.
• SIC: System Identification Code - uniquely identifies each systems within the airport.
• SAC: should normally be 0 for other systems in the same airport.
• X: System origin is located east from witness origin by X meters.
• Y: System origin is located north from witness origin by Y meters.

This does not need to be configured for systems who's origin coincides with Witness origin.

			<SourcePositions>

				<Sic>153</Sic>

				<Sac>0</Sac>

				<X>-200</X>

				<Y>150</Y>

			</SourcePositions>

HeartbeatInterval

• Period, in seconds, between each heartbeat being sent to every connected client. Default is 10 seconds.

BufferTracks

• Buffer tracks to send in batches on TimerTicks

Custom specification for Data Item I010/020

Spare bits in Data Item I010/020 "Target Report Descriptor" Structure of Second Extent is re-purposed in Witness CAT-10 to enable additional classification information.

The I010/020 item will always be included in Witness CAT-10 track reports and will always include at least 3 octets - 1 octet in the standard First Part as per the CAT-10 specification, and 1 octet in a First Extent as per CAT-10 specification and 1 octet in the Second Extent with the spare bits used for Witness classification .as per specification below:

Structure of Second Extent:

CAT-10 Original specification:

SPI = Special Position Identification

FX = Extension into next extent

Witness CAT-10 repurposed specification

Classification = 6 bit unsigned integer (0-32) indicating the classification:

Vehicle and Aeroplane classifications can also be obtained from the standard Target Report Descriptor First Extent as per CAT-10 specifications.

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