Advanced air mobility (AAM) is an emerging sector in aviation aiming to offer secure, efficient, and eco-friendly transportation utilizing electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. These vehicles are designed for short-haul flights, transporting passengers and cargo between urban centers, suburbs, and remote areas. As the number of flights is expected to rise significantly in congested metropolitan areas, there is a need for a digital ecosystem to support the AAM platform. This ecosystem requires seamless integration of air traffic management systems, ground control systems, and communication networks, enabling effective communication between AAM vehicles and ground systems to ensure safe and efficient operations. Consequently, the aviation industry is seeking to develop a new aerospace framework that promotes shared aerospace practices, ensuring the safety, sustainability, and efficiency of air traffic operations. However, the lack of adequate wireless coverage in congested cities and disconnected rural communities poses challenges for large-scale AAM deployments. In the immediate recovery phase, incorporating AAM with new air-to-ground connectivity presents difficulties such as overwhelming the terrestrial network with data requests, maintaining link reliability, and managing handover occurrences. Furthermore, managing eVTOL traffic in urban areas with congested airspace necessitates high levels of connectivity to support air routing information for eVTOL vehicles. This paper introduces a novel concept addressing future flight challenges and proposes a framework for integrating operations, infrastructure, connectivity, and ecosystems in future air mobility. Specifically, it includes a performance analysis to illustrate the impact of extensive AAM vehicle mobility on ground base station network infrastructure in urban environments. This work aims to pave the way for future air mobility by introducing a new vision for backbone infrastructure that supports safe and sustainable aviation through advanced communication technology.
Efficient Box Approximation for Data-Driven Probabilistic Geofencing
Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) using electrical vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft is an emerging way of air transportation within metropolitan areas. A key challenge for the success of AAM is how to manage large-scale flight operations with safety guarantees in high-density, dynamic, and uncertain airspace environments in real time. To address these challenges, we introduce the concept of a data-driven probabilistic geofence, which can guarantee that the probability of potential conflicts between eVTOL aircraft is bounded under data-driven uncertainties. To evaluate the probabilistic geofences online, Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) based on Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is customized to model data-driven uncertainties. Based on the FFT-KDE values from data-driven uncertainties, we introduce an optimization framework of Integer Linear Programming (ILP) to find a parallelogram box to approximate the data-driven probabilistic geofence. To overcome the computational burden of ILP, an efficient heuristic algorithm is further developed. Numerical results demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed algorithms.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2138612
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10472746
- Publisher / Repository:
- World Scientific
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Unmanned Systems
- ISSN:
- 2301-3850
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 12
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1142/S2301385024410024
