Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Vertical Applications' Trials Leveraging Advanced 5G Facilities

Project Information

5G!Drones

Grant agreement ID: 857031

DOI

10.3030/857031

Project closed

EC signature date 22 May 2019

Start date 1 June 2019

End date 30 November 2022

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 12 870 578,75

EU contribution

€ 12 870 578,75

Coordinated by

OULUN YLIOPISTO
Finland

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - 5G!Drones (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Vertical Applications' Trials Leveraging Advanced 5G Facilities)

Reporting period: 2021-06-01 to 2022-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have initiated a wide range of civilian and commercial applications, such as traffic control, cargo delivery, video streaming, and rescue and search. Regulatory changes, technological advancements, and the reduced cost of sensory components and onboard control units have made UAVs more accessible for consumer and civilian applications. For Europe in particular, the SESAR Joint Undertaking reports there is a potential for European market exceeding EUR 10 billion annually by 2035, identifying value-added services using UAVs (“Drones-as-a-Service”) as the largest market opportunity.

The 5G!Drones high-level objectives have been:
Objective 1: Analysis of the performance requirements of UAV verticals’ applications and business models in 5G. The final architecture design reported in Deliverable D1.6 addresses the mechanisms with which trials were conducted and the Deliverable D1.7 details the regulatory and business ecosystem of UAVs with 5G.

Objective 2: Design and implementation of the 5G!Drones software layer (or system) to execute UAV trials. The project has developed and demonstrated the 5G!Drones functionality system via trials.

Objective 3: Design a high-level scenario descriptor language to run and analyse the results of the UAV trials. The solution is TRL3 level, meaning experimental proof of concept that has been used during the trials.

Objective 4: Design and implementation of 5G!Drones enablers for UAV trials and operations. The enablers have been developed and have been at the core of the different tests and trials.

Objective 5: Validate 5G KPIs that demonstrate execution of UAV use cases; Objective 6: Validate UAV KPIs using 5G; and Objective 7: Advanced data analytics tools to visualise and deeply analyse the trial results, and provide feedback to the 5G and UAV ecosystem.Trial Evaluation Report Deliverable D4.4 details the Trials as well as reports qualitative and quantitative results of the individual Trials.

Objective 8: Dissemination, standardisation and exploitation of 5G!Drones. The project has carried out extensive work on the objective and the results have been reported on Deliverables D5.4 D5.5 and D5.6.

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

Objective 1: The Deliverable D1.1 describes each Use Case scenario detailing hardware and software enabling components for the UAV trial to realise. D1.7 makes an analysis of the UAV market, the regulation and legislation to date vs. to come, as well as the role 5G. The D1.6 provides detailed information about functional and security requirements, and the final architecture.
Objective 2: is addressed through high-level design of 5G!Drones overall architecture (D1.6) 5G trial Facility description (D1.5) Trial controller (D2.4 D2.5 D2.6) and Infrastructure enablers (D3.3).
Objective 3 Deliverable D2.4 and D2.5 detail results achieved. An operational flight plan has been defined, which specifies the information required to describe a scenario, in accordance with the European Commission document on a regulatory framework for the U-space to enable issuing UAS flight authorisation. The Trial Controller software components supporting 5G!Drones tests, is described in D2.5.
Objective 4: The WP2 has delivered the description of Trial Controller, a core enabler and the web portal. WP4 has specified integration plan in D4.2 and a trial plan in D4.3. The main achievements towards this objective are reported in Deliverable D3.3 and D3.4.
Objective 5: This objective has been validated by trial plan D4.3 and trials evaluation report D4.4.
Objective 6: This objective has been validated by trial plan D4.3 and trials evaluation report D4.4.
Objective 7: This objective has been validated by data analysis and visualisation software implementation D2.6 trial plan D4.3 and trials evaluation report D4.4.
Objective 8: Dissemination, showcasing, exploitation activities have been reported in D5.1 D5.2 D5.5 and D5.6. The project has performed and delivered according the plans despite it has to adapt to situation caused by Covid-19. The work performed towards standardization and international fora during is reported in D5.4.

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)

Expected impact “Validated core 5G technologies and architectures in the context of specific vertical use cases and deployment scenarios, from high to low density regions”: The use cases defined and trialed were distributed to all the four facilities and are representative to deliver this expected impact.
Expected impact “Validated core technologies and architecture for differentiated performance requirements originating from eMBB, mMTC, uRLL use cases, notably for end-to-end slicing and virtualisation”: All the facilities have adopted various approaches in the validation of this impact due to delays in standardization and from the different starting points at the project start.
Expected impact “Viable business models for innovative digital use cases tested and validated across a multiplicity of industrial sectors, incl. demonstration of required network resource control from the vertical industry business model perspective”: The Task T1.1 was dedicated to following and contributing to this. The Project has a very active Innovation Management Team contributing to the future prospects. The Deliverable D1.7 extensively coves the topic.
Expected impact “Impactful contributions towards standardisation bodies, involving vertical actors, for what concerns the second phase of 5G standardisation”: The partners are contributing to the following bodies: 3GPP, GSMA, GUTMA, ACJA, CEPT/ECC, ASTM, ETSI, IETF, BNAE, 5G-PPP, ITU-T, FAA, SESAR-JU, NASA, EUROCAE, EASA, ADS-STAN, and ISO.
Expected impact “Validation of relevant KPIs with services linked to specific vertical sectors”: The project has conducted extensive trials, in four phases, being the main means for delivering this expected impact. The main outcomes are reported in Deliverable D4.4.
Expected impact “Europe 5G know how showcasing”: The Deliverables D5.2 and D5.5 detail the activities done.
5G!Drones is expected to have a significant impact on products via its development and trial activities, leading new or updated product lines in a short time horizon. Currently, the industrial partners FRQ, AIR, HEP, INV, ALE, UMS, CAF, DRR, THA, and NOK have products or technologies that are expected to be impacted by the 5G!Drones project. The Deliverables D2.4 D2.5 and D3.3 describe the advances towards reaching the first 5G platform that will be tailored to run UAV services over 5G networks, which are the expected technological impacts.
The project has demonstrated, with trials, services for the public sector with a goal to offer enhanced and timely citizen services leading in effect to better use of public resources. In addition, 5G!Drones has contributed to the development of a positive public opinion on UAV systems.
The project partners are participating in several European level standardization activities as well as influencing regulatory activities by participating in European and global joint activities regarding UAV and UAV traffic management initiatives. The consortium composition includes the whole value chain from different EU countries.

5G Drones high-level architecture