Assessing C2 communications for UAS traffic management

Abstract

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) project works to develop tools and technologies essential for safely enabling civilian low-altitude UAS operations. Currently there is no established infrastructure to enable and safely manage the widespread use of lowaltitude airspace and UAS operations, regardless of the type of UAS. The UTM technical challenge will develop comprehensive and validated airspace operations and integration requirements to safely enable large-scale persistent access to visual line of sight and autonomous beyond visual line of sight small UAS in low-altitude airspace. Within the UTM project, a number of communications technologies to support UTM command and control (C2) are under investigation. In particular, commercial networked cellular systems are being tested and assessed for their ability to meet the reliability, scalability, cybersecurity and redundancy required. NASA Glenn Research Center is studying some of the aspects of employing such networks for UTM C2 communications. This includes the development of a test platform for sensing and characterizing the airborne C2 communications environment at various altitudes and in various terrains and topologies, measuring such aspects as received signal strength and interference. System performance aspects such as latency in the link, handover performance, packet error loss rate, drop outs, coverage gaps and other aspects impacting UTM operation will also be assessed. In this paper we explore some of the C2 approaches being proposed and demonstrated in the UTM project, the reliability, availability and other general C2 performance requirements, and approaches to evaluating and analyzing UTM C2 links based on commercial cellular networks.

Flight Demonstration of Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) at Technical Capability Level 3

“…The USSs submitted real-time data to the USS Data Collector (UDC). Total technologies for sUAS operations including airborne and ground system functions [24] as they relate to the SAA and CNS focus areas.…”

Cellular Based Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems MIMO Communications

“…In order to study MIMO configurations, we first need to specify the size of the sUAS under consideration. Figure 2 shows the sUAS used in NASA's UTM project [12]. This vehicle has a 40A electronic speed controller (ESC) built in to each arm in an octocopter configuration.…”

ADS-B Like UTM Surveillance Using APRS Infrastructure

“…UAVs may be classified by their weight and thrust into small or large scale UAVs with rotor wings and fixed wings. Command and control (C2) [8] is the main function for operating visual line-of-sight (VLOS) or beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flight. Small UAVs (sUAVs) will be legal to fly below 400 feet in urban to remote areas for a variety of applications.…”