Intelligent Cyber-Physical System for Advanced Air Mobility and UAS Traffic Management

The expansion of the aviation sector, especially in low-altitude airspace, is driving the need for integration of conventional Air Traffic Management (ATM) and Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM). This integration is also important to accelerate the uptake of emerging Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) technologies and the establishment of feasible use cases for both urban and regional transport modes. To this end, this paper presents the conceptual design of an Intelligent Cyber Physical System (ICPS) for Multi-Domain Traffic Management (MDTM), which is intended to facilitate the safe, efficient and sustainable operation of manned and unmanned aircraft. This ICPS is based on recent advances in Communication, Navigation and Surveillance (CNS) systems for ATM, along with onboard Avionics (CNS+A), with automated decision-making functions to guarantee Separation Assurance and Collision Avoidance (SACA) in both cooperative and non-cooperative scenarios. The proposed ICPS design utilizes multi-objective 4D trajectory (4DT) optimization algorithms and intelligent Demand-Capacity Balancing (DCB), providing an effective solution to multi-domain airspace management. This paper sheds light on the benefits and challenges of this integrated approach and presents the overall MDTM architecture, focusing on the hardware components and software functions required in both the aircraft Flight Management Systems (FMS) and ground-based Decision Support Systems (DSS). Moreover, an innovative methodology for calculating the safe separation distance between manned and unmanned aircraft is presented, showing the effect of using different CNS technologies on the safe separation distance and avoidance volume.