SecureTrack Use Case Examples

Building a Virtual Radar

Our API can be used to feed your virtual radar application with tracking data. It will allow you to focus on building a user interface that meets your (or your customer’s) requirements instead of dealing with the complexity of building a network or collecting and processing the vast amounts of surveillance data. Simply connect your GRX receivers to our platform or get readily available data from SeRo and integrate the real-time air picture into your application.

For almost all real-time air-picture use cases, we recommend using the GetTargetReports call (see SecureTrack API Reference for more information). You will get all ADS-B data (including position and heading of all aircraft) as well as MLAT data in a convenient, ready-to-use format.

Typical workflow:

  1. Call GetSensorInfo once to show the sensors associated with your token.

  2. Subscribe to GetTargetReports.

  3. Prefer ADS-B position data when present and recent.

  4. Use MLAT position data for targets without usable ADS-B positions.

  5. Monitor dropped_reports for increases.

Get Your Receivers’ GPS Locations

If you want to display your network of GRX receivers on a map or if you simply want to monitor the health and quality of your GRX’s GPS synchronization, you can do so via the GetSensorInfo API call (see Service Overview for more information). The response will contain all you need to know, including, but not limited to, GPS position, altitude and number of GPS satellites your receiver is currently seeing.

Check whether GNSS position information is present before using it. A sensor may be online before detailed GNSS data has been reported.

Collect Mode S Data for Certain Transponders

If you are interested in collecting low-level Mode S data on targets tracked by your network, you can use our GetModeSDownlinkFrames API call (see Service Overview for more information). This call will allow you to subscribe to all Mode S (including 1090ES ADS-B) signals received by your sensors in a convenient way.

Note

We recommend using filters, for example a downlink format filter for DF 17 ADS-B frames, to reduce the data volume. Depending on the number of receivers you have access to and their locations, a single receiver can easily generate more than 2000 data points every second. Processing such a large amount of data is not trivial.

Typical workflow:

  1. Use df_filter to limit the stream to the downlink formats you need.

  2. Add sensor_filter if you only need data from selected receivers.

  3. Add aircraft_filter if you only need selected ICAO addresses.

  4. Read raw frame bytes from reply and reception metadata from receptions.

  5. Monitor dropped_frames for increases.

Target-Specific Monitoring

If you only care about a known list of aircraft, use aircraft_filter on GetTargetReports or GetModeSDownlinkFrames. This keeps stream volume small and reduces the risk of client-side backlog.

Handling High-Volume Streams

SecureTrack streams are live and can be high volume. Keep the receive loop lightweight, cancel streams explicitly when they are no longer needed, and use the dropped counters to detect data loss.