Unmanned Aircrafts in All Future Airspace

The UAAFA project has been very successful scientifically and it has produced very good results in the many field trials that have been carried out. The main goal of the project was to increase safety in operations outside of line of sight. In such operations, one is completely dependent on navigation aids, and in particular GNSS (GPS). We have demonstrated that it is possible to create an alternative navigation system with the same precision and reliability as GNSS (GPS) using new algorithms and signal processing on array antennas. The project has had a twofold focus; implementation of initial data collection and further development of navigation algorithms. It has been carried out The field tests have shown that the scientific work in the project works in a real operational environment. The data collection has taken place using both fixed-wing UAV and rotary-wing through experiments carried out in the project. A system, PARS, has been used for the data collection developed by NTNU, and flights have been made to test new positioning algorithms. Important data has been collected for a GPS-independent navigation system with several ground antennas in use at the same time. The algorithms make it possible to navigate in global coordinates (ECEF), which will lay the foundation for including more ground antennas in a natural way. In addition, we have extended the orientation of coordinate systems to be able to operate with references also from mobile platforms. The radio navigation system has been extended so that it will perform a calibration against RTK-GNSS when available, to increase accuracy. Provision has also been made for flying in larger areas, by formulating the navigation solution in a global framework. An important part of the project has been to use various sensors to filter out erroneous measurements in addition to algorithms that extract depth information from the radio system to estimate covariance and remove erroneous measurements due to reflections from the radio measurements. The project has also done extensive work on flying in an ad hoc network organized as a mesh network. Test flights have been made on Andøya for the collection of data from multiple land stations for the positioning of a drone that flies within the sector of each land station. Field tests have also been carried out on Andøya where the GPS has been disrupted or "jammed" and long flights of several hundred kilometers have been carried out over a large area in northern Norway. Integration of equipment for logging positions during flights has been carried out in addition to equipment for radio communication. In this context, telemetry logs from previous aircraft wings were shared, so that the processing of the data stream could function as planned. In collaboration with Diamond Special Mission Aircraft, integration work has been carried out for the CRE179 UAV radio on Andøya Space's Diamond DA62 MPP aircraft. The integration has been carried out on the aircraft in order to ensure data capture in a safe and secure way after our UAV platform that was planned in the project crashed during a UAAFA operation in 2020. The integration has been carried out on an EASA certified manned aircraft, and has been approved with the radio without the restrictions that an "experimental" platform would have given, in connection with the integration, testing and verification of both EMC, cooling and optimal placement on the fuselage has been carried out before the documentation work is done. During the integration work, work has also been carried out to get all operating permits in place to be able to carry out future data capture flights, as well as verification flights, there are opportunities to retrieve alternative positioning data through integrated systems in the aircraft to carry out validations of radio positioning. After the integration, several tests have been carried out to ensure good data flow and linking up to ground-based radios. Costs for the integration work carried out by Diamond Special Mission Aircraft have been covered by Andøya Space in the total acquisition of the aircraft. In collaboration with Andøya, a navigation platform from Radionor has been installed on board the aircraft DA62, where this navigation platform has been used to test various algorithms for positioning and navigation in so-called "GNSS denied areas", in the aircraft engine which will further only provide good data sets for validation during flights . They also succeeded in the project of carrying out flights with UAVs where they "locked the loop", which means that the navigation data was used directly for controlling the UAV. In addition to the fact that it fulfills the main goal of the project in a convincing way, we have received valuable data that we can also take with us further from this project.

We have during the field trials in the project also disemminated the scientific results to potential customers in the market that has confirmed their interest in the phased array technology by inviting to commercial discussion of delivery of pilot products that will follow after the project has been finalised. We already see an interest in the market for the results of the project that is expected to generate revenue for the industrial partners for 2024 and the following years. The project has through the research achieved increased the precision and reliability of GNSS/GPS independent navigation systems by using sensor fusion. The scientific work has resulted in new algorithms tested in a real operative environment and has proved viability for further implementation in emerging products following the project. The project has shown significant advances in the characterization of covariance estimation and nagivation precission estimation which is a central factor for using navigation data for other systems. We have through the project demonstrated that complete UAV missions without any use of GNSS/GPS will be possible. We have also demonstrated this in cooperation with potential customers of the industrial partners, and the positive outcome from the project has resulted in several opportunities for commercial exploitation of the project results that will follow as a result of this project. The combination of partners have been very successfull and has provided for a very good outcome of the project. NTNU that has conducted scientific research and academic disemmination of results, Radionor Communications that has conducted scientific research and has clear plans for industrial exploitation of the results that has been confirmed by customers, and Andøya has through their research built and expanded their capacities for experimental UAV services and test field services that will follow after the project. In the project, NTNU has been a center of excellence for unmanned technology and done research in the field of navigation with sensor fusion while Radionor Communications has been a center of excellence for advanced wireless communication and done reserach using phased array wireless technology for communicaiton and navigation. Andøya has been a center of excellence for adcanced unmanned aerial operations and conducted research in platforms and operations. The combination of partners with complementary capacities has been the key to achieving the success in the project.

The project will conduct research and innovation that would increase the safety of unmanned aircraft operations to a higher level than the current state of the art technology. Today, there exist regulations and procedures to permit BLOS operations with certain restrictions. The regulations are not fully harmonized across all countries, and hence, countries like Norway with large, unpopulated areas have more opportunities to allow BLOS operations than countries with dense, populated areas. However, even in Norway with one of the most liberal regulations of unmanned systems operations, BLOS operations are only allowed when flying in uncontrolled airspace no higher than 120 meters above ground and BLOS flying in controlled airspace may only be performed in active danger areas or restricted areas with special permission from case to case to be granted from the air control service. Based on these challenges, this project will by research and demonstrate navigation and data link systems for unmanned aircrafts with another level of reliability, redundancy and level of integrity than the state of the art systems available today. The goal is to achieve a level of safety that the aviation authorities and aircraft traffic control would accept as sufficient to allow operations of medium and large sized unmanned aircrafts in BLOS operations in controlled airspace in populated areas together with other air traffic with normal separation distances and IFR operational procedures.