Mobile-Network Infrastructure for Cooperative Surveillance of low flying drones

Project Information

MoNIfly

Grant agreement ID: 723509

DOI

10.3030/723509

Project closed

EC signature date 20 March 2017

Start date 1 June 2017

End date 31 May 2020

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Smart, Green And Integrated Transport

Total cost

€ 2 021 250,00

EU contribution

€ 2 021 250,00

Coordinated by

TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITAET BRAUNSCHWEIG
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - MoNIfly (Mobile-Network Infrastructure for Cooperative Surveillance of low flying drones)

Reporting period: 2018-12-01 to 2020-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

As primary objective of MoNIfly the established concept will finally be validated in detail on a prototype level, where usage of LTE based mobile network will be exploited to create a drone traffic management cloud system. The results of the project will lead towards a common technology to be implemented into future drones for safe and simplified cooperative use. In the end, this project will provide input to rule makers by deriving requirements which new regulations can be based upon using results from the operational validation.
This is relevant research, because the number of drones in low altitude airspace is rising significantly in the last several years, with recent events at Gatwick airport highlighting the necessity of a surveillance system for the low altitude airspace. Even if it cannot handle all cases (as the MoNIfly system is designed to be of cooperative nature), the benefits of a low altitude surveillance system which can be used to track drones and make use of flight restriction zones is obvious.
MoNIfly will demonstrate that the mobile network available almost everywhere (and predominantly in urban areas) can be used to communicate between a central UTM server and individual drones, exchanging information and even override inputs from the operator.

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

In the reporting period, the concept of operations has been developed and aligned with other concepts of operation, derived for example in the CHORUS project. From this, requirements on the UTM system to be used in MoNIfly were derived. Additionally, the communication devices designed to be integrated into the drones have been developed. The next steps are integration of these UTM modems into the drones that are being used in the project and validation.

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)

To this day, a lot of work is being done on the design of the UTM system and its functions by much larger projects than MoNIfly, but there is a lack of investigation into the data link itself. MoNIfly intends to close this gap by using a rudimentary UTM server in order to investigate whether or not the mobile network provides the required latency, bandwith and throughput to communicate with drones through the mobile network for safety applications.

Validation of MoNIfly