Wireless Communication for Safe UAVs: From Long-Range Deconfliction to Short-Range Collision Avoidance

Small drones are becoming a part of our everyday life. They are used in a wide variety of commercial applications, and the number of drones in the air is steadily growing. To ensure the safe operation of drones, traffic management rules must be designed and implemented by avionics and telecommunication experts. In this article, we propose to establish a common terminology for these two communities. We first describe the traffic management architecture and services. Next, we provide an overview of several approaches for defining the interdrone separation distances to ensure safe operation. Moreover, we analyze which existing technologies can be useful for each of these definitions. Finally, we present measurement results indicating that our new Wi-Fi-based messaging scheme is a potentially useful tool for a drone traffic management system.