UAV electronic tracking and identification technology who will win this battle?
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In the past few years, there have been many discussions about how to properly monitor and track UAVs in the next 10 years. There are many opinions on this topic. Of course, just as many other hot topics of the moment, you will hear a lot of objections, such as why this or that technology does not work:
"If the ADS-B system is installed on each UAV, then the entire national airspace system will crash..." "Do you really want to believe in a navigation system that depends on LTE? What if the signal is interrupted?" Behind all this is an undisputed consensus that drones must be tracked and identified electronically.
Drones need to "cooperate". This is an indisputable consensus - just like the current manned aircraft. Any cooperative aircraft has a transponder (mode A/C/S or ADS-B) that allows the aircraft to be seen by other aircraft or air traffic control centers.
In the drone industry, the real controversy comes from which transceiver is used. In this article, I will explain three main points and analyze their respective advantages and disadvantages. And there is a small fortune here: they each serve different purposes and there is no complete competition. I will use the technical maturity (TRL) of the application to sort from high to low.

ADS-B
advantage:
ADS-B has extended from a large area of ​​civil aviation to other areas. ADS-B has become an international standard and its monitoring, identification, and obstacle avoidance functions have been used globally. According to the detection and avoidance (DDA) rules, drones need to be able to detect the surrounding civil aviation - if civil aviation has ADS-B, this will be very easy to achieve. But more importantly, ADS-B makes it possible for civil aviation to use the technology that is already popular to perceive drones. Because ADS-B technology is designed for aviation aircraft, its technology maturity is the highest among all options, and has become a standard and widely used. Today, through the efforts of the manufacturer uAvionix, ADS-B has a price acceptable to everyone and a suitable size for the drone design.
Disadvantages:
The main controversy over ADS-B is that the spectral capacity or excessive information on the control tower screen overloads the driver or control tower. We have envisaged a three-step approach to prevent these concerns from happening:
1. Reduce the number of drones with ADS-B. It is unrealistic to specify that all drones carry ADS-B. A more realistic approach is to control and restrict drones that perform dangerous operations, such as flying over crowds, flying out of sight, or even near airports or in controlled airspace.
2. Reduce the transmit power. The solution to the potential spectral problem is to drastically reduce the output power of the transceiver - this is directly related to the signal reception range. The power standard now specified is applied to long-distance communication between civil aviation and control tower systems (100-200 miles or more). If applied to aircraft near UAV warnings - then this power can be further reduced.
3. Reduce the number of transmissions. Through a concept we call "laziness and alertness," we can monitor drones and airspace and send signals only when security is needed. These security needs include the presence of aircraft in the vicinity, access to controlled airspace, altitude operations beyond altitude restrictions, or loss of command links.
In summary, we believe that ADS-B is not a tracking or monitoring role for drones as it is for civil aviation - but as a technology that integrates with existing aviation to make all users more secure.

LTE
advantage:
LTE or its successor "5G" is often thought of as the next brainless drone tracking technology. Some important infrastructures have already been established - the growth of the Internet of Things (LOT). Many research and commercial organizations are already developing UTM traffic management technology UTM. Although LTE's technology maturity is high, it is not as high as ADS-B, and LTE still needs some improvements to adapt to aviation applications.
Disadvantages:
What about those signal interruptions? This answer depends on whether the LTE system directly affects the safety of the aircraft or only affects the real-time information. If the signal is interrupted, but the aircraft can be automatically reconnected, and other safety measures on the aircraft can prevent the collision of the aircraft, then it will cause some inconvenience in flight driving. However, if LTE is an important part of the overall security solution, then LTE certainly needs to be more reliable.
In addition, there is the problem of "roaming" - or changing from one operator to another. The authentication process required to run from one network to the next is not easy and inconsistent. Therefore, a device manufacturer must invest a lot of money to ensure that all operator networks can operate. More importantly, there are some restrictions on the use of airborne application channels. At the same time, existing infrastructure antennas are built for terrestrial applications, which means that there are some inherent limitations that need to be overcome.
Of course, those major operators must be able to invest a lot of money to solve this problem. But the end result may be that you will pay the operator a fee for each drone flight, just like paying your mobile bill. In the end, I think that LTE/5G can eventually become the dominator of tracking and supervision, but it still has a long way to go before it can be used as a security rule system like DAA or C2.

Car to Vehicle Communication Technology (V2V)
advantage:
V2V has become a hot topic in NASA's UTM project over the past few years. The concept of V2V seems to be more than just a purely supervisory role, but rather the ability to communicate between drones, flight plans, or other UTM data.
Drone 1: "Oh, our flight path seems to converge at one point - but it seems that you are going to fly 100 meters south, so there is no problem, right?" Drone 2: "Yes, this is the plan Don't worry, buddy "Drone 1:" OK, I wish you have a good time today!
Sounds good, right? Yes, we still have a long way to go before we reach such a technology. This means that not only does the V2V system have to be highly automated and intelligent, drone flight control systems have to evolve. Fortunately, the V2V technology can be tested on driverless cars. Dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) has become a research topic and is known as "the future of safe driving." However, this is only the beginning in the field of drones.
Disadvantages:
V2V does not exist yet, and it may only exist in the research room until the UTM traffic management system matures.
So who eventually won this battle?
We compare these three technologies little by little, but eventually found that they all have different roles. It is perhaps unreasonable to call for an ultimate winner.
1. ADS-B is a technology for sharing airspace identification between manned and unmanned aircraft.
2. LTE/5G seems to be an effective UTM tracking and monitoring technology, but unlike DAA or C2, it can be a key security system.
3. V2V is more focused on semi-automatic systems that allow the aircraft to perform the best path through negotiation, highly dependent on UTM.
Although we are unlikely to select a final winner, we can choose a more appropriate choice based on current technology maturity and feasibility. We haven't waited for more than five years to wait for the traditional standards improvement or wait for the maturity of LTE and V2V research and become global standards. Nowadays we have only one choice to make flights safer and prevent mistakes. That is ADS-B—at least it is a temporary choice to solve the problem until the next more suitable technology emerges.

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