A safety assessment on the use of CPDLC in UAS communication system

This paper presents an analysis of the use of Controller-Pilot Data Link Communication (CPDLC) application for Unmanned Aerial System (UAS). A fault model for injecting different types of faults in the communication application was developed, which has been integrated in a federated-simulation framework for the safety analysis of communications within the Aeronautical Telecommunications Network (ATN). Thereby, the ATN Fault Module was used to perform fault injection in communication, in order to analyze the risk posed by interferences in the communication between UAS operations and ground-based air traffic service unit (ATSU), operating in non-segregated airspace. The presented analysis and results offer new elements to guide the discussion on the need of new communication technologies for next generation of aircraft. A simulation scenario was setup with typical characteristics of the aeronautical communication environment, being composed by the UAS dynamics, the digital link equipment, the CPDLC application and the ATN Fault Module. The results so far seem to demonstrate that our model is capable of appropriately representing some of the possible failure modes in digital communication in the UAS operations, allowing the analysis of safety issues related to message contents and transmission times in the interaction with Air Traffic Control (ATC).