Concept of Operation for integrating RPAS into terminal airspace

Abstract

Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS) is a capital issue for the majority of aviation actors nowadays. The integration of RPAS is an extremely demanding task that must be tackled by multiple standpoints: economic, social, technological or environmental among others. U-space is the answer from Europe to design the operation of multiple and different types of RPAS. U-space is a set of novel services designed to support efficient, safe and secure access to airspace, from the very low level to the upper airspace. This paper focuses on the terminal airspace to design the operational concept for the integration of RPAS in conjunction with conventional aircraft and general aviation. This work develops a holistic methodology to analyse the way RPAS integration affect crucial factors and tries to bring to the light different issues that can frustrate their integration. First, we focus on detailing the requirements specified by RPAS legislation. Second, all the requirements are gathered into different categories to perform further analysis. The categorisation identifies navigation, communication, surveillance, air traffic management and control, and safety as crucial categories (security is out of the scope of this study). The results provide for each category a proposal about how to solve the integration and implementation of RPAS in a TMA.