Report
Teaser, summary, work performed and final results
Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EMPHASIS (EMPowering Heterogeneous Aviation through cellular SIgnalS)
Teaser
The EMPHASIS (EMPowering Heterogenuous Aviation through cellular SIgnalS) research project aims to increase safety and reliability of General Aviation/Rotorcraft (GA/R) operations at low altitude as well as their interoperability with other airspace users. These aspects are...
Summary
The EMPHASIS (EMPowering Heterogenuous Aviation through cellular SIgnalS) research project aims to increase safety and reliability of General Aviation/Rotorcraft (GA/R) operations at low altitude as well as their interoperability with other airspace users. These aspects are critical elements to secure and improve airspace access for GA/R users in future airspace environments while also improving the operational safety of their operations. It is planned to achieve this objective through affordable Communication, Navigation and Surveillance (CNS) capabilities benefiting, among others, from existing and future mobile radio frequency (RF) network infrastructure.
Although the applicability and benefits of technological research conducted within the EMPHASIS project is expected to be broader, there are three main use cases driving the project’s activities:
• GA/R aircraft flying in airspace G are facing the risk of mid-air collisions among GA aircraft and in the future also with unmanned aircraft.
• Rotorcraft flying bellow 500ft are typically facing challenges with regard to possible degradation of satellite based navigation systems (GNSS) as well as with regard to potential conflicts with emerging drones’ operations (U-space).
• GA/R aircraft flying in terminal area are facing the risk of mid-air collisions with commercial aviation.
While considering these use cases, research activities are not restricted to on-board CNS capabilities only, but also consider possible ways how to complement them with flight supporting services.
Work performed
The first year of the project was primarily focused on developing the initial Concept elaborating the operational use cases targeted by the project and further analyzing their operational needs. This was complemented by thorough state-of-art studies in individual technological areas:
• Communication – focusing primarily on mobile RF technology and its comparison with existing aviation links;
• Navigation – focusing on network based positioning, GNSS limitations, and fusion of inertial and GNSS navigation systems.
• Surveillance - exploring low power ADS-B concepts and analyzing operational requirements of targeted use cases in terms of surveillance coverage, as well as capabilities of the latest generation of low cost millimeter Wave (mmW) sensors for obstacle detection.
In addition, a dedicated study of current certification process and its considered possible evolution was performed.
For all the above areas, the state-of-art analysis was complemented with the proposed way forward, conceptually defining the innovative solution(s) which will be further developed and validated in the second half of the project – the work on that solutions was already started and is progressing according the plan.
Final results
As already indicated in the above section, the objective of the first year of the project was oriented primarily on the detailed analysis of state-of-art in explored technological areas, analysis of operational needs associated with the targeted use cases, and refinement of the research hypothesis and of the proposed new solutions. While the actual research work going beyond this baseline (and therefore beyond the state-of-art) already started, majority of the scientific results and validations outcomes related to the adopted hypothesis/expectations will be available in the second half of the project.