Unmanned Aircraft Systems Sense and Avoid Flight Testing Utilizing ADS-B Transceiver

Abstract

The University of North Dakota has been actively developing enabling airborne sense and avoid (SAA) technologies under a series of projects funded by the Department of Defense, and has elected the Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast (ADS-B) transceiver as one of its central components for cooperative aircraft mid-air collision avoidance. This paper presents the results of modeling and testing collision avoidance algorithms using ADS-B derived information in a software-in-the-loop (SWIL) simulation environment, a hardware-in-the-loop (HWIL) simulation environment, and a flight test environment onboard a small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) vehicle during the summer of 2009. A procedure for flight testing the ADS-B-based SAA system that safely alleviates the need for any physical intruder aircraft is also explained. The flight test results demonstrate that an airborne SAA system utilizing an ADS-B transceiver can be integrated into a small UAS vehicle to improve safety and eventually allow integration of UAS vehicles into the U.S. National Airspace System (NAS).