3D Aerial Highway: The Key Enabler of the Retail Industry Transformation

The retail industry is facing an inevitable transformation worldwide, which is accelerating with the current pandemic situation. Indeed, consumer habits are shifting from brick-and-mortar stores to online shopping. The bottleneck in the online shopping experience remains efficient and fast delivery to consumers. In this context, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology is seen as a potential solution to address cargo delivery issues. Hence, the number of cargo UAVs is expected to increase in the next few decades and the airspace to become crowded. To successfully deploy UAVs for mass cargo delivery, seamless and reliable cellular connectivity for cargo UAVs is required. Thus, organized and “connected” routes in the sky are needed. Like highways for vehicles, 3D routes in the airspace should be designed to fulfill cargo UAV operations safely and efficiently. We refer to these routes as “3D aerial highways.” In this article, we investigate the feasibility of the aerial highways paradigm. First, we discuss the related motivations and concerns. Then we present our aerial highways paradigm design. Finally, we present linked connectivity issues and potential solutions.