Review of Air Traffic Management Systems for UAV Integration into Urban Airspace

The role of Unmanned Aircraft Systems have increased substantially in recent years and are now not only used for personal use but for commercial, search and rescue and military application. The increase of the UAS will pose a significant safety risk to not only buildings and property but to the public and general air travel. This increase will undoubtedly cause a significant strain on Air Traffic Control (ATC) system and will lead to UAS not being used to their full potential. The use of autonomous UAS will increase over the coming years, and a reliable system of Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) will be needed both for effective safety and reliability. Currently, there is no real framework in place to accommodate low level UAS in urban airspace. This research aims to discover the current state of the art technologies and innovations developed to create a workable UTM framework giving an overview of the various methods available to analyse the likelihood of a UTM being developed. The findings of the paper show that there is a definitive need for such a system to be developed and maintained if UAVs are to be incorporated into everyday life.