Industry Track and Keynote Panels

UAS Communications and Networking for Advanced Air Mobility

Globally, efforts are underway to integrate Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) into the civilian airspace. This integration is necessary and essential before the industry develops and deploys realworld commercial applications such as Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) using UASs. Traditionally, communication support to air traffic management (ATM) comes from satellite communications operating at the geostationary orbit level. Recently, an alternative hybrid paradigm of 4G/5G cellular communications operating on the ground, and aerial networks and communications operating in mid-air, is being investigated for UAS Traffic Management (UTM). All these communication paradigms differ in terms of performance factors, such as latency, resilience, and data rates that they can support.

The telecommunications industry is working towards cellular communication-supported services for UTM. Cellular networks offer wide-area, high-speed, and secure connectivity for Beyond Radio Line-of-Sight (BRLOS) use cases. In recent years, numerous field trials have been conducted using terrestrial LTE networks to provide connectivity to UASs. As we advance, 5G or Beyond 5G would be a natural choice for supporting UAS traffic management. On the other hand, aerial networks provide a solution for sharing information in mid-air among UASs, offering low latency and high data rates. However, establishing connectivity among the UASs without any supporting infrastructure is exceptionally challenging. Aerial ad hoc networks can complement satellite- and cellular-network-supported UAS navigation, command, and control. Specifically, a multi-layered architecture of integrated terrestrial, air, and satellite networks is promising for exploiting the advantages of different paradigms for networking and data exchange in AAM use cases. However, that integration is not trivial.

Additionally, especially with the current geopolitical landscape, resilience and security of these networks have become formidable requirements due to increasing threats and hostile actors. Therefore, these paradigms also have to be elaborated from the security and resilience perspectives. The panel will discuss the state of the art, challenges, standards, and regulatory aspects in efficient and resilient networking and communications enablers for AAM use cases.

Moderator:
Gürkan Gür, Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW)

Panelists:
1. Kamesh Namuduri, University of North Texas
2. Abdellah Chehri, Royal Military College of Canada (RMC)
3. Keven Gambold, Unmanned Experts
4. Antonios Lalas, Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH)