MANAGEMENT
AIR TRAFFIC TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL 2020 55.
including appropriate label display, mission
processing and coordination with other
aviation users. Enhancing ATM systems
with drone flight plans and tracks will allow
that integration. UAS already have to be
equipped with a transponder for
identification, surveillance and tracking in
Class E airspace from 5000ft as well as in
controlled airspace.
UTM as an end-to-end solution
The UTM by DFS offers services that are
fundamental to the safe operation of UAS in
airspace for all phases of flight. In the preflight
phase, operators can register
themselves in the UTM and plan their
missions. They can also double-check them:
Are there any no-fly zones or airspace
restrictions? Are there any other registered
flight movements? Do I need to obtain
permission to conduct operations or a
Specific Operations Risk Assessment?
If a permission from the responsible
aeronautical authorities is needed, the UTM
provides a workflow-based approval
procedure between them and the operators.
In addition, the UTM system continuously
processes additional external data, in
particular, meteorological data, chart data,
geodata, obstacle data and NOTAM feeds,
filtered for UAS. In the in-flight phase,
operators can track their drone in real time
and observe other aircraft, both manned and
unmanned, in a combined air situation
display, including those outside the visual
line of sight of the pilot in the field. The
UTM components in the post-flight phase
help to assess and follow up on the flight,
with logbook entries, incident management,
battery management, for instance.
The need for a web-based,
scalable cloud solution
Due to their operational characteristics, UAS
are part of aviation, which traditionally has
slow and considered innovation. However,
technologically drones are more similar to
the smartphone market – both are exposed
to disruptive, fast-moving trends. The
increasingly large number of UAS, operators
and other stakeholders makes a web-based
UTM solution more significant. As UAS
pilots in the field will also be among the
users who need situational awareness, mobile
app human machine interfaces on
smartphones or tablets must also be taken
into account. This naturally leads to having a
web-based, scalable cloud solution.
Safety and visibility in very
low-level airspace
It is interesting to observe that the
appearance of UAS in very low-level airspace
increases the focus on the visibility of
manned aircraft in this airspace. Manned
aircraft in Class G airspace are not obliged to
identify themselves, and ANSPs usually do
not have an ATC mandate here.
For their own protection, a low-cost
grassroots ATC based on ADS-B and traffic
Above: Flying drone with the LTE transponder and antennaes for
example for ADS-B and FLARM attached (Image: Droniq)
Left: Functional pyramid of traffic management systems applied
to UTM (Image: DFS)