Multi-interface network framework for UAV management and data communications

Recent efforts to manage Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) operations in European civilian environments have resulted in the development of U-space, the European Union’s UAS Traffic Management (UTM) concept of operations. This paper presents the primary purposes of the H2020 Labyrinth project (mainly focusing on the communications architecture), which has as its main challenge to create and validate UAV applications through the research and development of path-planning algorithms and new UTM services. In addition, this article performs a preliminary validation of a communications prototype (including three communication alternatives) with real equipment of the National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA) of the Spanish Ministry of Defense. The presented results show the functionality of the prototypes and serve as a starting point to develop the requirements defined in the communications architecture.