UAS Command and Control

Abstract

Integration of Unmanned Aircraft in non-segregated airspace is one of the major challenges preventing a wide deployment of UAS systems. A key component in achieving airspace integration is the Command and Control Link. Collins Aerospace has been working in supporting standardization efforts and developing a certifiable, small and light Line of Sight C2 link solution for UAV. The intent of the proposed paper is to provide an overview of the latest developments in C2 link standardization for UAS integration in non-segregated airspace together with an overview of prototyping and testing efforts carried out by Collins Aerospace in that domain. Collins Aerospace has been working over the last eight year in supporting standardization and developing a prototype to validate RTCA standard. The prototype implementation from Collins Aerospace operates in the dedicated UAS Command and Control bands and implements all waveforms modes as defined in the DO362 standard. Those waveforms are specifically designed to ensure maximum level of robustness for command and control data and minimize latencies. They are designed to cope with traffic such as ATC voice relay, Detect and Avoid data or Weather data. One of the key challenges besides robustness it to ensure a maximum number of users can share a small amount of spectrum. To that end, the waveforms are designed to meet a very tight spectrum masks and radios have to be able to sustain strong adjacent interferers. The paper will go into more details of the DO-362 waveform characteristics, it will present use cases and test results obtained with the Collins Aerospace developed prototype which flew on different platforms.