Paving the Way Towards a Comprehensive UTM Infrastructure by Evaluating Novel D2X Communication Systems for UAVS in Flight Tests

Abstract

In recent years, drone technology has become a key player in today´s globalized society. Initiatives in the U.S. and Europe, such as the Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM) framework proposed by NASA, the FAA and others, as well as the U-space concept, develop and explore Air Traffic Management (ATM) concepts to integrate Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) into the existing airspace in order to ensure safe coexistence and collaboration between manned and unmanned air vehicles in the future. One key attribute to maintain aviation safety, is safe and secure communications between all airborne vehicles, including UAVs. In consequence, this publication will describe and evaluate a novel D2X ("drone-to-drone", "drone-to-infrastructure" or "drone-to-vehicle") technology designed to provide fast and efficient communication means especially for UAVs. Just recently, a second generation of the D2X system has been designed and is now being validated in this analysis. First, this publication will describe and expound the technical setup and hardware configuration of the innovative D2X technology. Second, in the course of several field test campaigns at DLR´s National Experimental Test Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems in Cochstedt, Germany the entire toolchain of D2X has been evaluated in several different flight tests. In total, three different D2X configurations with different antennas have been tested and validated. In addition to the different system configurations, multiple flight tests whilst operating the UAV in various altitudes have been examined. Hereby, the conducted flight tests revealed a maximum range of r_max= 2380 meters at a cruising altitude of 100 meters with a data rate of 6 Mbit/s and a transmission power of 23 dBm. Moreover, in a second test campaign the area coverage of the proposed D2X system has been assessed. Hereby, a maximum area coverage of approximately 15.000 square meters can be reported.