Decentralized air traffic management requires coordination among self-interested stakeholders operating under shared safety and capacity constraints, where conventional centralized or implicitly cooperative models do not adequately capture this setting. We develop a unified perspective on noncooperative coordination, in which system-level outcomes emerge by designing incentives and assigning signals that reshape individual optimality rather than imposing cooperation or enforcement. We advance this framework along three directions: scalable equilibrium engineering via reduced-rank and uncertainty-aware correlated equilibria, decentralized mechanism design for equilibrium selection without enforcement, and structured noncooperative dynamics with convergence guarantees. Beyond these technical contributions, we discuss core design principles that govern incentive-compatible coordination in decentralized systems. Together, these results establish a foundation for scalable, robust coordination in safety-critical air traffic systems.
Air traffic management (ATM) has traditionally relied on centralized coordination, where a single authority enforces globally efficient decisions [1]- [4]. However, centralized architectures increasingly face structural limitations: Rising traffic density introduces scalability challenges [2], [3], which are further amplified in emerging traffic paradigms such as urban air mobility [4]. Moreover, centralized systems may lack the flexibility and resilience required to adapt to disruptions and rapidly evolving operational environments [5], [6].
These limitations have motivated the development of decentralized ATM concepts, in which decision-making authority is distributed among multiple stakeholders [2], [7], [8]. In such settings, airlines, sectors, and regional authorities operate with local objectives, private cost structures, and limited willingness to share sensitive operational information. Consequently, system-level performance is no longer dictated by centralized optimization, but instead emerges from strategic interactions among stakeholders.
A substantial body of research has investigated decentralized ATM architectures from multiple perspectives. Early efforts in distributed air/ground traffic management proposed redistributing decision authority from centralized control cen-ters to aircraft operators and ground systems [7]- [9]. Subsequent work explored decentralized air traffic flow management methods based on distributed optimization and multiagent coordination [9]- [12]. In parallel, research in urban traffic management and low-altitude advanced air mobility management adopted partially decentralized architectures involving multiple service providers [2], [11], [13]- [15]. More recently, UAM-oriented ATM architectures have emphasized hierarchical structures to address resilience requirements in emerging urban airspace systems [2], [15].
Much of the existing literature on conflict resolution and flow management, however, assumes cooperative behavior or central enforcement with explicitly noncooperative formulations appearing only in limited cases [12], [16]. At the same time, recent work recognizes that, in the absence of a central authority, competition over shared resources must ultimately be resolved through negotiation-or incentive-based mechanisms, yet clear and widely adopted strategic protocols remain lacking [13], [16]. These observations suggest the explicit modeling of stakeholder interaction as a noncooperative interaction remains comparatively underexplored. Therefore, decentralized ATM should be modeled as a noncooperative multi-agent system in which stakeholders pursue individual objectives while operating under shared safety and capacity constraints.
We propose a research topic that investigates the following central question:
" How can coordination emerge in decentralized air traffic systems among self-interested, noncooperative stakeholders without relying on a central authority? "
We address this question through a unified perspective on noncooperative coordination via incentive design. First, we review three interconnected research directions: scalable equilibrium engineering, decentralized mechanism design with convergence guarantee, and structured noncooperative dynamics with system performance guarantees, including dynamic incentive control for large-scale air traffic systems. Beyond these technical contributions, we discuss the underlying design principles that enable noncooperative coordination to emerge in decentralized ATM settings.
We propose three interconnected research areas that has been investigated to enable noncooperative coordination in decentralized air traffic management (ATM).
Equilibrium concepts model how self-interested agents interact in decentralized systems. Uncoordinated strategic behavior typically converges to Nash equilibrium, which often yields inefficient and unfair outcomes.
Correlated equilibrium expands the achievable outcome space by allowing a coordinator to send signals that align individual incentives with system-level objectives. Rather than predicting behavior, we treat equilibrium as a design variable: the coordinator constructs a distribution over joint actions such that no stakeholder benefits from unilateral deviation.
) for every player i and any actions a i , a ′ i ∈ A i . While correlated equilibrium enables efficient coordination without centralized enforcement, its direct computation scales exponentially with the number of agents and actions. To address this limitation, we developed the Reduced-Rank Correlated Equilibrium (RRCE) method.
- Reduced-rank correlated equilibria [17]: RRCE approximates the correlated equilibrium set by restricting coordination to the convex hull of a finite collection of precomputed Nash equilibria. Instead of enumerating all m n joint actions in an n-player m-action game, the method operates in a low-dimensional subspace spanned by selected equilibria, dramatically reducing computational
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