How to Implement U-Space at an Airport – A General Overview of an Interaction and Synchronization Concept

The European Commission (EC) issued the European Regulation (EU) 2021/664, among others, prescribing that UAS operations in U-space are only allowed with the approval and continuous support of certain mandatory U-space services. To be precise, UAS operators request flight authorization from the applicable U-space Service Provider (USSP) to fly their missions. Thereby, any data exchanged between UAS operators and USSPs will be consolidated and distributed via a data hub known as the Common Information Service (CIS). The interaction between different systems (CIS, USSP, UAS operators, and external service providers) within U-space is crucial for sharing information between all stakeholders. To that aim, the Airspace REsearch Area (AREA) U-space project defined an interaction and synchronization concept for these systems, which shall be discussed in this publication. The most significant data services delivered into the CIS system are crewed and uncrewed traffic data, geographical data, and relevant metadata for UAS operations. As a result, any USSP connected to CIS has the complete air traffic situation available. This paper proposes novel sequence diagrams for the four mandatory U-space services defined in the regulation (EU) 2021/664, i.e., network identification, traffic information, geo-awareness, and flight authorization service. A detailed view of the exchanged data between the stakeholders for all four services and the sequential process per service will also be given. Moreover, this paper details the envisaged synchronization concept for the desired U-space area by utilizing the well-known Network Time Protocol (NTP) and describing the NTP server integration within the existing server infrastructure. In essence, this work can be seen as a pivotal step for the deployment of U-space in Europe by considering the characteristics of a highly challenging environment being an active airport in Germany.