Certified E-GNSS Remote TrackIng of Drone and Aircraft FLIGHTs

Project Information

CERTIFLIGHT

Grant agreement ID: 101082484

DOI

10.3030/101082484

Project closed

EC signature date 17 October 2022

Start date 1 November 2022

End date 30 April 2025

Funded under

• Digital, Industry and Space

Total cost

€ 3 077 325,00

EU contribution

€ 2 291 602,50

Coordinated by

TOPVIEW SRL
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - CERTIFLIGHT (Certified E-GNSS Remote TrackIng of Drone and Aircraft FLIGHTs)

Reporting period: 2024-02-01 to 2025-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The rising number of UAS (drones) accessing the airspace and the increased complexity of their operations in BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line Of Sight) conditions, led to the introduction of specific rules and procedures for their use (EU regulatory package 2021/664 U-space) where UAS is expected to operate alongside ultralight and general aviation aircraft.
For this class of aircraft and UAS there is no aeronautical grade certified component ensuring position information that is trustable enough to be used to ensure the position and flight path information with evidential value from a legal perspective inside the U-space airspace.
In this scenario, a solution that ensures the authenticity of the position information is needed for all the U-space users operating in Very Low Level Airspace (VLL - up to 120 meters above the ground level), especially for safety-critical and commercially valuable applications.

CERTIFLIGHT project proposes a new U-space service for the legal certification of tracks generated by UAS and aircraft flights, through the introduction of a new disruptive EGNSS-IoT digital system. Certiflight solution aims to establish and uphold the "chain of trust" of flight data information of drones and ultralight aircraft with particular attention to position information:
• The recorded flight tracks, with associated images and data acquired, are useful for delivering a new class of UAS services for business, but also for law enforcement, auditing systems and accident investigations.
• Legal aspects have a crucial role in the Certiflight service
• Certiflight uses concepts similar to those applicable to tachographs that are established in the Commission implementing Regulation (EU) 2016/799.
• Certiflight legitimizes the use of “smart contracts”, by activating the contractual conditions based on particular flight routes and performance.
• Several use cases were identified with final users of the service and some demonstrations of the basic features were already showcased.

Certiflight aims to generate a meaningful impact at different levels:
• technological /societal, by raising awareness about EGNSS services (i.e. OSNMA) as a possibile implementation for standardization of Legal Recording Services related to tracking applications ;
• scientific/technological, by exploiting EGNSS features in combination with dissimilar technologies for spoofing detection and mitigation
• business / EU competitiveness, by contributing to the competitiveness of the European SMEs in the area of UTM services;
• Economic/Societal, by maximizing the benefits made by Certiflight for mobility and the sharing economy
• Environmental /Business, through UAS trajectories optimization for new environmental friendly applications as parcel delivery implemented by electric drones.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The project activities have completed the phases of “Research”, “Engineering – Design” and “Engineering-development”, according to a System Engineering methodology, combined with a more flexible and proactive “Agile” Methodology that
Gave to the project the possibility to showcase in advance some basic functionalities of the Solution to the target stakeholders. The Activities are in line with the Gantt and some results are already available.

The main achievements and technical outcomes of the projects are summarized:

•Definition of a clear Concept of Operations for Certiflight services. The new class of business services with a legal value offered by Certiflight are in line with the development of the U-space.
•Definition and implementation of the first authenticated tracking service for drones in the U-space/UTM ecosystem through the realization of a first prototype of UTM Box, enabled to Galileo OSNMA service.
•Standardization of Authenticated tracking feature in the ISO 23629-12 where Galileo OSNMA service combined with blockchain has been suggested as a possibile implementation.
•GNSS Algorithms for Spoofing detection and Authenticated Position Propagation. Two algorithms (GSD - GNSS Spoofing Detection and APP – Authenticated Position Propagation) based on machine learning were implemented and their training is in progress. In particular:
o APP Algorithm protects the solution from true position manipulation (i.e. spoofing attacks), being as much as possible independent from GNSS measurements (i.e. by using IMU measurements with higher weight than GNSS measurements).
o GSD algorithm mitigates Spoofing attacks as Meaconing, Synchronized Spoofing and SCER attacks through the acquisition of GNSS observables, providing time-tagged prediction of GNSS signal class (Authentic/Spoofed)
• Definition and partial implementation of Light Report and Full Report for Post flight activities through the usage of Certiflight platform. Such services are the basis of Smart Contract activation.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The intermediate results beyond the state-of-the-art are mainly those related to the standardization of the authenticated tracking service, where Galileo OSNMA plays a central role for carrying out the service. The activity has covered
the successful submission, review and integration of amendments to the Standard ISO-23629-9 “UAS traffic management (UTM) Part 9: Interface between UTM service providers and users”, defining the Authenticated Tracking service, completed on 5th of December 2023. Moreover, Certiflight team is actively participating to the EUROCAE WG-105 SG-3 in order to contribute to the writing of the standard expected for Q4 2024 /Q1 2025.

The GNSS algorithms for Anti-spoofing techniques (GSD and APP algorithms) present very promising, though still partial results for spoofing detection.

The integration with three U-space Service Providers (D-flight, Maia UTM and Unifly) has started and is in progress, as well as the design and realization of the second prototype of the IoT/EGNSS UTM Box that will allow users to generate the certified reports, combined with Certiflight software platform.

The first demonstration of the CERTIFLIGHT platform combined with the first prototype of UTM Box was held in October 2023 within the “Drones Beyond 2023” event in Bari with particular interest of institutional and private stakholders.

One of the key needs to ensure further uptake and success is the scalability of the solution at international level that might need access to finance, through private finance instruments (i.e. VC access).
The Revenue stream of Certiflight solution, considering its entire lifecycle with a specific focus on costs, benefits and risks is actually under study for the definition of the final version of the Business Model.

Certiflight front end software platform

Certiflight UTM Box First Prototype

Contribution of Certiflight in the standardization process for Authenticated tracking services