Hyper-Spectral Communications, Networking & ATM: Progress and Perspectives

In 2017 we reported on NASA”s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) University Leadership Initiative (ULI) program, and in particular the launching of our Hyper-Spectral Communications and Networking for Air Traffic Management (ATM) (HSCNA) project. The HSCNA project is the only ULI program to address communications and networking. Since that time our HSCNA team has made progress in multiple areas: (i) review of NASA and FAA future Concepts of Operations (ConOps) for the National Airspace System and identification of relevant concepts and technologies for HSCNA; (ii) comprehensive categorization and evaluation of current and planned communications technologies that can be used for aviation, across frequency spectrum spanning five orders of magnitude (e.g., 3 MHz HF through 100 GHz), including evaluation of performance gaps; (iii) development of a framework for design of adaptive multi-band and multi-mode aviation communication waveforms and multiple access schemes, with two novel waveforms created thus far; (iv) investigations of new millimeter wave (mmWave) aviation link deployments, including channel modeling at airports in multiple mmWave bands and accompanying mmWave communication link designs; and, (v) evaluation of RF detection of unauthorized UAS. In this paper we review our ULI project, and describe example results for each of our tasks. This includes results from analyses, computer simulations, and experiments in several of the task areas. Future work is also described, and the conference presentation will incorporate newest results.