FLIGHT TESTS OF RANGES AND LATENCIES OF A THREEFOLD REDUNDANT C2 MULTI-LINK SOLUTION FOR SMALL DRONES IN VLL AIRSPACE

Abstract

Over the past years the UAV market has grown rapidly and will continue so. Several manufacturer offer UAVs, which differ in their size, equipment or performance. Besides the basic regulations many initiatives deal with the question of how a future airspace management system for unmanned and manned airspace users could look like. The German Aerospace Center (DLR) has started the City-ATM project [1], which seeks to identify essential components for such a system. The focal point is on a safe, secure and efficient integration of new airspace users, but also to be robust against failures. Therefore the drone operator needs on the one hand information about his drone and on the other hand information about the surrounding airspace users. In the course of City-ATM, DLR works together with several external partners to find, test and validate a variety of solutions which enable such an airspace management system as well as necessary sub-systems and solutions that are needed in such a system. One of the solutions to find and validate is a redundant communication system to enable reliable data exchange between drone and pilot as well as unmanned aerial system and airspace management system. In this paper the technical setup, consisting of a (mobile) ground and air module and the basic functionality will be described to meet the requirements from a future UTM system. In addition the HyraCom system has been evaluated by conducting flight tests under real conditions and external influences in VLL (Very Low Level) airspace. In this context communication range and latency of each C2 link has been used as performance criteria.