Abstract
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and UAV traffic management (UTM) have drawn attention for applications such as parcel delivery, aerial mapping, agriculture, and surveillance based on line-of-sight (LoS) links. UTM is essential to operate multiple fully autonomous UAVs safely beyond the visual line of sight (BVLoS) in the future dense UAV traffic environment. Various research and development teams globally take UTM initiatives and work on platform testing with different industrial partners. In the future, urban airspace will be congested with various types of autonomous aerial vehicles, thereby resulting in complex air-traffic management caused by communication issues. The UTM requires an efficient communication backbone to handle all airborne communication services. Existing cellular networks are suitable only for terrestrial communication and have limitations in supporting aerial communications. These issues motivate the investigation of an appropriate communication technology for advanced UTM systems. Thus, in this study, we present a future perspective of 6G-enabled UTM ecosystems in a very dense and urban air-traffic scenario focusing on non-terrestrial features, including aerial and satellite communication. We also introduce several urban airspace segmentation and discuss a strategic management framework for dynamic airspace traffic management and conflict-free UAV operations. The UTM enhances the adaptive use of the airspace by shaping the airspace with the overall aim of maximizing the capability and efficiency of the network. We also discuss the 6G multi-layer parameters i.e., space, air, and terrestrial, for safe and efficient urban air transportation in three-dimensional space. Moreover, we discuss the issues and challenges faced by future UTM systems and provide tentative solutions. We subsequently extend the vision of the UTM system and design an advanced and fully autonomous 6G-based UTM system.
Highlights
The Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has been known for centuries and is commonly called drones, aerial vehicles, flying cars, etc
This paper mainly focused on 5G standardization, research challenges and architecture for UAVs but they neither discussed on how the 5G can be used in UAV traffic management (UTM) systems nor any non-terrestrial connectivity
DIRECTIONS In previous sections, we have presented communication technologies focusing on non-terrestrial networks (NTNs) features of 6G communication for dynamic air traffic management in UTM systems
Summary
The UAV has been known for centuries and is commonly called drones, aerial vehicles, flying cars, etc. The communication support for UTM requires three levels of connectivity i.e., satellites operating at low-earth orbits, ground stations (such as cellular networks), and flying aerial vehicles. The low- and high-altitude airspace will be congested with various types of aerial vehicles in the coming decades, and air-traffic management will be more complex. It is obvious that there is an urgent requirement for an air-traffic management system, such as UTM, to handle high-and low-altitude aerial vehicles. It supports emerging technologies that evolve and scale as the density of aircraft increases It offers safety for manned and unmanned aircraft, including terrestrial cars and buildings, by facilitating real-time situational awareness, dynamic flight management, and traffic density management to adjust scheduled operational activities based on 6G communication. A list of acronyms is provided in Table 1 for ease of reading and understanding
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