Air Traffic Control for Commercial Drones: New Drone Analyst Research

1|Copyright 2015 – Drone Analyst

AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL FOR SMALL DRONES: IS ADS-B RIGHT?

November 2, 2015Colin Snow

CEO and Founder

Summary of Research Report: ADS-B and Its Use for Small Drone Traffic Management


Research Topics What is ADS-B?

Six key insights from research

Visions for unmanned traffic management

Ins and Outs

Understanding issues and overcoming misconceptions

Survey statistics


Dude, where’s that plane?

Source: Heartlandbeat | Photo Courtesy of Aurora Coop (Dawn Caldwell)

Will ADS-B solve this problem?


What’s in the report? The study is both qualitative and quantitative. The qualitative portion includes information gleaned from academic sources as well business sources -- including interviews with aircraft avionic vendors working on ADS-B solutions for all size UAS. Data collected for the quantitative portion study comes from a survey we conducted over the web in August 2015.

The study gives six key insights and seven recommendations. It also:

• determines the practicability of using ADS-B for use in small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) from the perspective of owners and operators

• analyzes if ADS-B is the right solution for small drones operating in low-altitude airspace

• identifies ten major issues with current ADS-B technology that become even more concerning once you start putting transponders on a small drone flying at a low altitude

• informs about recent innovations, technical limitations, and integration attempts

• evaluates how well commercial drone service providers and operators understand the issues of ADS-B

• calls out the traffic management issues that need to be addressed if ADS-B is used and integrated with other alternative technologies


Sample content


What is it?

Automatic: it works in the background

Dependent: depends on other aircraft being equipped

Surveillance: it’s a technology to track aircraft

Broadcast: each aircraft broadcasts its position and velocity

Automatic Dependent Surveillance –Broadcast (ADS-B)


Alphabet soup ADS-B is filled with acronym after acronym.

Some of the more commonly-used ones are TIS-B, FIS-B, UAT, 978 and 1090ES.

Source: iOme


Misconceptions

Source: Drone Analyst

Receiving ADS-B Out signals from 1090 MHz provides a complete picture of local air traffic. Wrong.


Research Survey: 10-question research survey on unmanned traffic management technology to get opinions about ADS-B solutions for small drones.

Study: What are the advantages and disadvantages of ADS-B for commercial use of small UAS in U.S. Class G airspace?

August 2015


Who took the survey?

31%

22%

43%

65%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

Pilot’s license

Sec 333 holder or applicant

Employee, owner, or principle

Hobbyist / enthusiast / expert

Q. Tell us a little about yourself. (check all that apply)

http://www.suasnews.com/

http://www.suasnews.com/

http://diydrones.com/

http://diydrones.com/


1%

8%

22%

35%

36%

36%

51%

54%

68%

80%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%

Other

Signal isn’t powerful enough

Poor flight controller connectivity

Not integrated with other sense and avoid avionics

Not integrated with ground control software

Limited benefit for visual line-of-sight operations

Power consumption

Size is too big

Too heavy

Cost too much

Source: Drone Analyst

Perceptions about ADS-B for small drones


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37 pages

14 figures

7 recommendations





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Air Traffic Control for Commercial Drones: New Drone Analyst Research