TY - JOUR
T1 - A performance-based airspace model for unmanned aircraft systems traffic management
AU - Pongsakornsathien, Nichakorn
AU - Bijjahalli, Suraj
AU - Gardi, Alessandro
AU - Symons, Angus
AU - Xi, Yuting
AU - Sabatini, Roberto
AU - Kistan, Trevor
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding: The authors wish to thank and acknowledge Thales Australia—Airspace Mobility Solutions for supporting this work under the collaborative research project RE-02544-0200315666. The authors also wish to thank and acknowledge the Australian Cooperative Research Centre on Intelligent Mobility and Vehicle Evolutions (iMOVE CRC) for supporting this work as part of the iMOVE industry-based student projects initiative.
Funding Information:
The authors wish to thank and acknowledge Thales Australia-Airspace Mobility Solutions for supporting this work under the collaborative research project RE-02544-0200315666. The authors also wish to thank and acknowledge the Australian Cooperative Research Centre on Intelligent Mobility and Vehicle Evolutions (iMOVE CRC) for supporting this work as part of the iMOVE industry-based student projects initiative.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
PY - 2020/11
Y1 - 2020/11
N2 - Recent evolutions of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) concept are driving the introduction of new airspace structures and classifications, which must be suitable for low-altitude airspace and provide the required level of safety and flexibility, particularly in dense urban and suburban areas. Therefore, airspace classifications and structures need to evolve based on appropriate performance metrics, while new models and tools are needed to address UTM operational requirements, with an increasing focus on the coexistence of manned and unmanned Urban Air Mobility (UAM) vehicles and associated Communication, Navigation and Surveillance (CNS) infrastructure. This paper presents a novel airspace model for UTM adopting Performance-Based Operation (PBO) criteria, and specifically addressing urban airspace requirements. In particular, a novel airspace discretisation methodology is introduced, which allows dynamic management of airspace resources based on navigation and surveillance performance. Additionally, an airspace sectorisation methodology is developed balancing the trade-off between communication overhead and computational complexity of trajectory planning and re-planning. Two simulation case studies are conducted: over the skyline and below the skyline in Melbourne central business district, utilising Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B). The results confirm that the proposed airspace sectorisation methodology promotes operational safety and efficiency and enhances the UTM operators’ situational awareness under dense traffic conditions introducing a new effective 3D airspace visualisation scheme, which is suitable both for mission planning and pre-tactical UTM operations. Additionally, the proposed performance-based methodology can accommodate the diversity of infrastructure and vehicle performance requirements currently envisaged in the UTM context. This facilitates the adoption of this methodology for low-level airspace integration of UAS (which may differ significantly in terms of their avionics CNS capabilities) and set foundations for future work on tactical online UTM operations.
AB - Recent evolutions of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) concept are driving the introduction of new airspace structures and classifications, which must be suitable for low-altitude airspace and provide the required level of safety and flexibility, particularly in dense urban and suburban areas. Therefore, airspace classifications and structures need to evolve based on appropriate performance metrics, while new models and tools are needed to address UTM operational requirements, with an increasing focus on the coexistence of manned and unmanned Urban Air Mobility (UAM) vehicles and associated Communication, Navigation and Surveillance (CNS) infrastructure. This paper presents a novel airspace model for UTM adopting Performance-Based Operation (PBO) criteria, and specifically addressing urban airspace requirements. In particular, a novel airspace discretisation methodology is introduced, which allows dynamic management of airspace resources based on navigation and surveillance performance. Additionally, an airspace sectorisation methodology is developed balancing the trade-off between communication overhead and computational complexity of trajectory planning and re-planning. Two simulation case studies are conducted: over the skyline and below the skyline in Melbourne central business district, utilising Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B). The results confirm that the proposed airspace sectorisation methodology promotes operational safety and efficiency and enhances the UTM operators’ situational awareness under dense traffic conditions introducing a new effective 3D airspace visualisation scheme, which is suitable both for mission planning and pre-tactical UTM operations. Additionally, the proposed performance-based methodology can accommodate the diversity of infrastructure and vehicle performance requirements currently envisaged in the UTM context. This facilitates the adoption of this methodology for low-level airspace integration of UAS (which may differ significantly in terms of their avionics CNS capabilities) and set foundations for future work on tactical online UTM operations.
KW - ADS-B
KW - Air traffic management
KW - Airspace
KW - GNSS
KW - Performance-based navigation
KW - Sectorization
KW - UAS traffic management
KW - Unmanned aircraft system
KW - Urban air mobility
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85094831255&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3390/aerospace7110154
DO - 10.3390/aerospace7110154
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85094831255
SN - 2226-4310
VL - 7
SP - 1
EP - 25
JO - Aerospace
JF - Aerospace
IS - 11
M1 - 154
ER -