Differentiation from WLAN: Why do we need a remote 5G campus network when we could continue with WLAN as before?

• WLAN cannot be used in real applications such as Search & Rescue due to insufficient range (5G set)
• In drone swarms, distributed navigation can improve navigation accuracy. To achieve this, however, significant communication effects (e.g. latency) in a swarm of drones must be understood and taken into account.
• In intralogistics, only 5G can be used to localise AGVs and drones. (not possible with WLAN)

Relevant research questions 

• Technology demonstrations with ‘5G Wireless Communication Technology’ both indoors and outdoors
• Maintaining robust/reliable wireless communications during the flight
• Localization and navigation of UAVs for network-based formation control
• Space-air-ground integrated network for autonomous flying
• Wireless communications with vertiports and UAV swarms

UAM, Drones in Factories

UAV in factories

• Production, surveillance

Urban Air Mobility(UAM 2030+)

• UAM as a service
• Airline business expansion through UAM
• The challenges of UAM: UAM remains a niche

Communication types for UAVs

• Geofencing: Aviation authority defined non-fly zones (enforced through the 3GPP ecosystem)
• UAV and UAV Controller tracking and flight route analysis (periodic locations are requested to ensure geofencing)
• Network-Assisted UAV verification and monitoring

1. Steer to waypoints: Pre-scheduled waypoints or other flight declarations are communicated from the UAV controller or UTM to the UAV
2. Direct stick steering: the UAV controller directly communicates with the UAV in real time to provide flight directions through waypoints
3. Automatic flight by UTM: the UTM provides this autonomous flight option through an array of predefined 4D polygons. The UAV feeds back periodic position reports for flight tracking purposes.
4. Approaching autonomous navigation infrastructure: the C2 infrastructure supports autonomous UAV flights and may provide updated flight instructions, such as the next waypoint, altitude and speed. Autonomous departing and landing operations may be also provided. 

Autonomous flying cargo (How big, how heavy, how reliable)

Limitations of computer-vision based autonomous flying: darkness, target too far to be “seen”, etc.

Proposal: Path planning and 5G combination to implement autonomous flying:

• Path planning: how to decide the sampling over classic methods such as RRT
• How robust/reliable are the links:

     - UAV-to-UAV (formation control)

     - UAV-to-I* (autonomous flying/navigation)

THI 5G:

• Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is in the making.
• UAM industries: Aerospace, Avionics, Telecommunications, Artificial Intelligence.
• Air routes design required to define the traffic of airborne vehicles, and of future fully automated aircrafts.
• Autonomous flying use-case: inspection of polluted industrial plants, gas leakage with UAV equipped with sensor, end-to-end pick-up & delivery, over-the-air software update, wireless communications access point deployment, SAR(Search-and-Rescue)

Additional projects on Unmanned Flight Systems and Urban Air Mobility can also be found at the Technology Transfer Center (TTZ) "Unmanned Flight Systems."