Integration of UAS in Terminal Control Area

In this article, we test a horizontal detect and avoid algorithm for UASs flying in Terminal Control Areas. We have used recorded commercial traffic trajectories and randomly built thousands of conflict scenarios with UASs to check the ability of such an algorithm to ensure the separation with commercial aviation. We consider two different types of UASs, flying at 80kn or 160kn, with six different missions: flying straight or turning and leveled, climbing or descending. We only focus on horizontal maneuvers at constant speed in order to not interfere with the TCASs of aircraft, nor rely on most UASs poor ability to change speed. The article investigates the influence of the various parameters on the separation achieved and the amount of maneuvers required, especially the strategy used to select the best maneuver among the allowed headings. The analysis of our results shows that, amid two basic and “extreme” strategies that favor either minimal heading changes or the robustness of the maneuvers, the combination of both, switching from the first one to the second whenever the distance between the UAS and aircraft falls under a given threshold, gives the best results with very few remaining airproxes, while keeping low the amount and amplitude of maneuvers.