Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management

UTM

Michael Scott Baum, Michael S. Baum

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367644734
• eBook ISBN: 9781000379556
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Mechanical Engineering
• Index: Technology & Engineering

This book introduces unmanned aircraft systems traffic management (UTM) and how this new paradigm in traffic management integrates unmanned aircraft operations into national airspace systems.

Exploring how UTM is expected to operate, including possible architectures for UTM implementations, and UTM services, including flight planning, strategic coordination, and conformance monitoring, Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management: UTM considers the boundaries of UTM and how it is expected to interlace with tactical coordination systems to maintain airspace safety. The book also presents the work of the global ecosystem of players advancing UTM, including relevant standards development organizations (SDOs), and considers UTM governance paradigms and challenges.

FEATURES

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• Describes UTM concept of operations (ConOps) and global variations in architectures

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• Explores envisioned UTM services, including flight planning, strategic coordination, conformance monitoring, contingency management, constraints and geo-awareness, and remote identification

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• Highlights cybersecurity standards development and awareness

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• Covers approaches to the approval, management, and oversight of UTM components and ecosystem

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• Considers the future of UTM and potential barriers to its success, international coordination, and regulatory reform

This book is an essential, in-depth, annotated resource for developers, unmanned aircraft system operators, pilots, policy makers, researchers, and academics engaged in unmanned systems, transportation management, and the future of aviation.

1Introduction

1.1 UTM Defined

“UTM is not a concept, it's an upcoming reality.”

Reinaldo Negron

Head of UTM, Wing¹

Unmanned aircraftany machine, manned or unmanned, that can derive support in the atmosphere from the reactions of the air other than the reactions of the air against the earth's surface. systems (UAS) traffic management, or UTMfederated services operating under regulatory oversight supporting safe and compliant UAS operations., is a fundamentally new paradigm in air traffic management (ATM) in which computer systems, rather than air traffic controllers, coordinate to manage drone traffic. More formally, UTM is a highly automated and cooperative, distributed system of systems facilitating the safe, efficient, and compliant integration of UAS operations into a nation's airspace system, initially at low altitudes.² UTM, including related concepts such as Europe's U-space, is intended to manage UAS traffic “without overloading current air traffic control systems.”³ UTM shares certain attributes with legacy ATM systems to provide separation, flow control, and navigation services. As with ATM, airspace management, traffic flow management, and control systems are considered the “core part of UTM.”⁴ Yet UTM is different from ATM in important respects. While humans (e.g., pilots, air traffic controllers) play a central role in legacy ATM, UTM relies on computing infrastructure to manage several keyfollowing a USS request for airspace data regarding an area of interest, an airspace representation and associated key are returned. The key, composed of multiple values, indicates that the USS has collected the applicable information, and is aware of that airspace's traffic, and serves to authorize a DSS ledger update and detect changes in the DSS airspace representation. See opaque version number (OVN). roles and provide “an all-encompassing framework for managing multiple UAS operations.”⁵ “UTM is structured on principles of risk [management] and a performance-based approach, and leverages a flexibility when possible and structure where necessary principle. It is based on the following tenets: predefined protocols for cooperative data exchanges, manage by exception, third party services, and service-oriented architecture (SOA)decomposes complex application systems into components with common characteristics and releases data/information remotely to enhance re-usability across platform, collaboration, and independence..”⁶

We can think of UTM and ATM as complementary means to provide essential traffic management services. UTM services should ideally coordinate with and could eventually merge into a universal ATM, creating a unified, seamless, and transparent infrastructure regardless of operation.⁷ However it is integrated, UTM is introducing new third-party service providersan organization or individual providing functions or services of ATM or UTM., changing communications paradigms and protocols, defining new performance requirements, and spurring reexamination of the relationships, responsibilities, and capabilities of aviation actors including civil aviation authorities (CAAs), air navigation service providers (ANSPs), UAS, and other airspace users, both manned and unmanned. Depending on the jurisdiction and implementation, CAAs and ANSPs may delegate certain operational functions while CAAs continue to focus on their regulatory, safety oversight, and security roles.⁸ Given the fast pace of innovation, UTM will inform applications, including urban air mobility (UAM)a subset of advanced air mobility (AAM) providing passenger and cargo transport within urban environments. and associated advanced air mobility, AAMaviation that moves people and cargo in urban, rural, and interregional environments via increasingly automated systems and technically advanced vehicles; a superset of urban air mobility (UAM).), high altitude operations, and beyond.⁹ In sum, UTM will transform the architecture of air traffic management.

Unless otherwise stated, “UTM” is used generically rather than to describe a specific implementation. U-space, the European UTM initiative, is addressed primarily in Chapter 5, Section 5.3.

1.2 Why UTM

“UTM is such a critical piece of riskthe combination of the overall probability or frequency of occurrence of a harmful effect induced by a hazard and the severity of that effect. mitigation.”

Robert W. Brock

Dir. of Aviation & UAS, Kansas DoT¹⁰

Today's air traffic control (ATC) was designed over the course of the last 100 years for manned aircraft operations and relies on pilots communicating with air traffic controllers. “ATM is clearance-based because only ATC has complete awareness of the airspace operations and constraints4D volume(s) created to denote specific time and geographically limited airspace information; used primarily to notify operators of areas requiring special awareness or avoidance, or to block access..”¹¹ But the growth of unmanned flight operations challenge the legacy ATM infrastructure and render its use for managing UAS traffic infeasible.¹² As the legacy system reaches its limits in scale, especially in the most congested and complex airspace, adding large numbers of UAS requires a new paradigm.

The need for UTM is driven by the rapidly growing volume of UAS operations, “potentially orders of magnitude more than current manned operations,”¹³ expected to be undertaken both on- and off-airport, including from vertiports, homes, commercial building roofs, and other nontraditional aviation locations.¹⁴ Conducting this volume of operations safety is only possible if managed with intensive automation. “[H]istorical experience suggests that increasing[ly] congested air traffic needs an appropriate level of organization [and] an organized approach to enabling [UTM] operations to balance efficiency and safety.”¹⁵

Aside from the sheer volume of UAS traffic, fundamental characteristics of UAS challenge existing aviation conventions and protocols. For example, with no pilot on board, small UAS (sUAS) challenge the most basic requirement for a pilot to see and avoid¹⁶ other aircraft. The sUAS remote pilotthe person controlling the flight path of an unmanned aircraft. The remote pilot may include a remote pilot in command or person supervised thereunder. may have no way to see manned aircraft, and manned aircraft pilots simply cannot safely see sUAS.¹⁷ In addition to their small size, today's sUAS are not yet generally required to broadcastto transmit data to no specific destination or recipient; data can be received by anyone within broadcast range. their positions with cooperative surveillance transmitters, making them hard to detect, and sUAS can undertake maneuvers that are beyond the expectations and surveillance capabilities of traditional ATM.

For many operations UAS must be separated from other UAS and from manned aircraft, obstacles, and other hazards. Separation is multifaceted and multi-layered¹⁸—it includes and requires procedures (standards, rules, policies), proc...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Author
• List of Abbreviations
• Selected Terminology
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Concept of Operations
• Chapter 3 Standards-Making for UTM
• Chapter 4 UTM Governance
• Chapter 5 Selected Initiatives and Implementations
• Chapter 6 The Future of UTM
• Chapter 7 Conclusions
• Notes
• Selected References/Bibliography
• List of Abbreviated References
• Index