Uncertain Case for ADS-B In Small Drone Traffic Management

This post is a follow up to a previous post: Is ADS-B Right for Small Drones and also appears in sUAS News ‘The Market’

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What the heck is ADS-B and why should I care?

I asked myself that question a year-and-a-half ago, because I kept seeing the term ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast) come up in discussions and articles on unmanned aircraft traffic management (UTM).

You may have seen it yourself in the UTM solutions proposed by Amazon, Google, PrecisionHawk, and NASA, with NASA trying to coordinate it all. They all know that someday unmanned vehicles will share airspace at low altitudes with general aviation equipment such as airplanes, helicopters, and gliders. Agreeing on a safe and efficient system that will manage both manned and unmanned traffic is a vital concern for the FAA, NASA, private companies, and academic users.

NASA’s UTM Fact Sheet summarizes the concern that there is currently no infrastructure system in place for UAS flight:

“A UAS traffic management (UTM) system for low-altitude airspace is needed, much like today's surface vehicles that operate within a system consisting of roads, lanes, stop signs, rules, and lights, regardless of whether the vehicle is automated or driven by a human… Civilian use of UAS has many growing applications: product delivery, surveillance security, agriculture, film industry, mapping and planning, real estate, and search and rescue.”

This was never envisioned when the FAA conceived the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) for manned aviation, which is due for implementation across the U.S. in stages between 2012 and 2025 and proposes to transform America’s ground-based air traffic control system to a satellite-based one. So, here we are looking for an infrastructure solution to low-altitude flight management, and the mistake may be that we are trying to solve it with an “all-altitude” flight management solution.

Regardless of the origin, all of these system proposals all have one thing in common - ADS-B. This technology is the key element for the system ‘tracking’ and reporting a drone’s position to other aircraft.

But is it right for all small UAS operating in Class G airspace?

With that question in mind, we conducted an in-depth research study and have just released it: ADS-B and Its Use for Small Drone Traffic Management.

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. For example...

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Uncertain Case for ADS-B In Small Drone Traffic Management

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