Decentralized Air Traffic Management for Advanced Air Mobility

Abstract

The large public interest in Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) will soon lead to congested skies overhead cities, analogously to what happened with other transportation means, including commercial aviation. In the latter case, the combination of large distances and demanded number flights is such that a system with centralized control, with most of the traffic control decisions made by human operators, is safe. However, for AAM, it is expected a much higher demand for flights, because it will be used for people's daily commutes. Thus, higher automation levels will become a requirement for coordinating this traffic, because of its higher complexity, which might not be effectively managed by humans. The establishment of fixed air routes can abate complexity, however at the cost of limiting traffic capacity and decreasing flight efficiency. Another alternative is the use of a powerful central system based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and / or other advanced algorithms, which would allow flexible trajectories and higher efficiency. However, such system would require concentrated investment, could contain Single-Points-of-Failure (SPoFs), would be a highly sought target of malicious attacks, and would be subject to periods of unavailability.This work proposes a new technology that solves the problem of managing the high complexity of the AAM traffic with a secure distributed approach, without the need for a proprietary centralized automation system. This technology enables distributed airspace allocation management and conflict resolution by means of trusted shared data structures and associated smart contracts running on a blockchain ecosystem. This way, it greatly reduces the risk of system outages due to SPoFs, by allowing peer-to-peer conflict resolution, and being more resilient to failures in the ground communication infrastructure. Furthermore, it provides priority-based balancing mechanisms that help to regulate fairness among participants in the utilization of the airspace.

Blockchain PoS and PoW Consensus Algorithms for Airspace Management Application to the UAS-S4 Ehécatl

“…These contracts automatically enforce and trigger actions when predefined criteria are satisfied, eliminating the need for intermediaries and ensuring a transparent, tamper-proof process. In the realm of space allocation, smart contracts can be harnessed to manage and allocate spaces based on specific rules [51].…”

“…intermediaries and ensuring a transparent, tamper-proof process. In the realm of space allocation, smart contracts can be harnessed to manage and allocate spaces based on specific rules [51].…”

“…These contracts automatically enforce and trigger actions when predefined criteria are satisfied, eliminating the need for intermediaries and ensuring a transparent, tamper-proof process. In the realm of space allocation, smart contracts can be harnessed to manage and allocate spaces based on specific rules[51].In the context of a sharding flight zone, the utilization of a smart contract is pivotal for establishing a consensus framework. Consequently, a voting platform was devised utilizing the Ethereum blockchain[52] to ensure the secure allocation of airspace to Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) and to prevent conflicts.…”

Comparing the Performance of Traffic Coordination Methods for Advanced Aerial Mobility

“…1. In this paper's analyses, the cells are not needed for coordination, however that structure is still needed to generate the large number of different traffic configurations, because the origin and destination points of an air vehicle's mission are placed in the outer cells (7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18). The traffic configurations are generated by a factorial algorithm with the following constraints:…”

“…This choice is technically correct, however, in practice, it is not an equitable policy, because the id remains unchanged for the lifetime of the vehicle, and that either blesses or condemns the vehicle with a persistent tendency to being promoted or being penalized. Thus, a randomized priority assignment would be needed, but that would have to be cheat-proof and fault-proof [11], which would bring some extra cost to the system.…”