Geo-fencing to secure airport perimeter against sUAS

Abstract

Purpose Small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) are becoming increasingly popular among hobbyists, and with this popularity there comes the risk of runway incursion between a commercial aircraft and sUAS around airports. To keep airports safe and secure, the purpose of this paper is to propose a module, called the Airport Secure Perimeter Control System, that can be attached to every hobbyist’s sUAS for the purpose of notification and prevention. Design/methodology/approach Upon startup, the module connects to a database containing the central coordinates of every airport in the USA. A five-mile critical radius plus an additional one-mile buffer region is established around each point. The buffer region is created in order to inform the user that he/she is approaching a safe airspace and needs to take corrective action. Once the five-mile zone has been breached, autopilot software takes over the manual controls, and the sUAS is landed in a controlled manner, while the user still has lateral control of the vehicle in order to avoid any potential hazards below it. Then, both operator and airport receive messages about the event. Findings To demonstrate the proposed design, a prototype was developed that successfully implemented this system, and was formally tested within a controlled environment. Originality/value This solution would drastically reduce the security threat of sUAS breaching the critical regions surrounding airports, and its implementation is relatively simple.

Managing the drone revolution: A systematic literature review into the current use of airborne drones and future strategic directions for their effective control

“…Security management remains a critical issue. Invasion (intentional or not) of sensitive airspaces, like airports ( Boselli et al, 2017 ) and power stations ( Solodov et al, 2018 ) have the potential to and do cause costly disruption (e.g. the near-total closure of Gatwick Airport and disruption to fire and emergency services work in Tasmania in 2018).…”

“…An Internet-of-Drones ( Edwin et al, 2019 ) is a very potential future. Research into the use of flying ad-hoc networks to monitor and manage deviant drone behaviour ( Bahloul et al, 2017 ; Barka et al, 2018 , Karthikeyan and Vadivel, 2019) are in progress, as are geofencing ( Boselli et al, 2017 ) and signal jamming ( Chowdhury et al, 2017 ) that act on the navigation systems within drones to prevent drone incursion into restricted areas. Though to implement some of these preventative technologies, it is, of course, necessary that the relevant drones have navigation technologies installed to be acted upon by the countermeasures, which for a substantial number of retail drones is not the case.…”

Sense and avoid for small unmanned aircraft systems: Research on methods and best practices

“…However, direct utilization of a GPS receiver in an SAA system has also been proposed. Boselli et al 61 designed and prototyped a geo-fencing system based on a GPS module, which protects airport area against sUAS. When the vehicle breaches critical zone around the airport the sUAS automatically lands in a controlled manner.…”