Merging in Air Corridors Using Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communications

With a projected increase in the traffic volume of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) by 2030, congestion of airspace and communication techniques between multiple UAS are the main challenges. The use of UAS in various applications, such as air taxis, air ambulances, disaster management, etc., requires a dedicated Air Traffic Management (ATM) system to avoid Near Mid-Air Collisions (NMAC). The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) campaign will require air corridors stationed in structured airspace to ensure the functionality of a densely packed UAS ecosystem. This paper focuses on using structured airspace to facilitate vehicle pathway transitions between two adjacent air corridors using Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communications in a special use case scenario known as merging. The paper focuses on the message protocol for merging, which is demonstrated and implemented using AirSim.