Sense And Avoid (SAA) & Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) Integration for Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS)

Abstract

The emerging role of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) for both military and civil operations hinges on the ability to gain unrestricted access to national airspace. One of the key issues that must be resolved to open up the skies to UAS is coexisting safely and effectively with current manned operations in Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)controlled airspace. This includes the ability to perform Sense and Avoid (SAA) functions at an “equivalent level of safety” (ELOS) to manned aircraft while not negatively impacting the existing infrastructure and manned Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) that create today’s safe airspace. An SAA system consisting of multiple dissimilar passive and active sensors can be designed to provide a robust and safety-critical autonomous collision avoidance solution to protect against midair collisions with both cooperative (transponding) and non-cooperative (non-transponding) intruder vehicles. In this paper, the authors investigate the feasibility of using data from multiple sensors to drive a collision avoidance algorithm that is compatible with current manned TCAS II-equipped aircraft. Furthermore, the authors investigate the effects of integrating TCAS II on UAS.