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A reliable command and control (C2) data link is required for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) operations in order to monitor the status and support the control of UAS. A practical realization of the C2 communication and mission data links for commercial UAS operations is via LTE/5G networks. While the trajectory of each UAS directly determines the flight distance and mission cost in terms of energy dissipation, it also has a strong correlation to the quality of the communication link provided by a serving base station, where quality is defined as the achieved signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) required to maintain the control link of the UAS. Due to signal interference and the use of RF spectrum resources, the trajectory of a UAS not only determines the communication link quality it will encounter, but also influences the link quality of other UAS in its vicinity. Therefore, effective UAS traffic management must plan the trajectory for a group of UAS taking into account the impact to the interference levels of other base stations and UAS communication links. In this paper, an SINR Aware Predictive Planning (SAPP) framework is presented for trajectory planning of UAS leveraging 4G/5G communication networks in a simulated environment. The goal is to minimize flight distance while ensuring a minimum required link quality for C2 communications between UAS and base stations. The predictive control approach is proposed to address the challenges of the time varying SINR caused by the interference from other UAS’s communication. Experimental results show that the SAPP framework provides more than 3dB improvements on average for UAS communication parameters compared to traditional trajectory planning algorithms while still achieving shortest path trajectories and collision avoidance. 

Command and control (C2) data links over cellular networks is envisioned to be a reliable communications modality for various types of missions for Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS). The planning of UAS traffic and the provision of cellular communication resources are cross-coupled decisions that should be analyzed together to understand the quality of service such a modality can provide that meets business needs. The key to effective planning is the accurate estimation of communication link quality and the resource usage for a given air traffic requirement. In this work, a simulation and modelling framework is developed that integrates two open-source simulation platforms, Repast Simphony and ns-3, to generate UAS missions over different geographical areas and simulates the provision of 4G/5G cellular network connectivity to support their C2 and mission data links. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first simulator that co-simulates air traffic and cellular network communications for UAS while leveraging standardized 3GPP propagation models and incorporating detailed management of communication channels (i.e., resource blocks) at the cellular base station level. Three experiments were executed to demonstrate how the integrated simulation platform can be used to provide guidelines in communication resource allocation, air traffic management, and mission safety management in beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations.