A Novel Navigation Performance-based Airspace Model for Urban Air Mobility

Abstract

The emergence of the UAS Traffic Management (UTM) framework has led to the potential to designate new airspace structures and classifications that are suitable for low altitude airspace and particularly in denser urban and suburban areas. This paper presents a novel airspace management approach for Urban Air Mobility (UAM) below the skyline in particular. A robust airspace discretization methodology is developed based on the expected navigation performance. Additionally, a novel methodology is developed to optimally generate airspace sectors from discrete 3D airspace cells. A preliminary verification of the novel airspace structuring methodology is performed based on navigation performance with a reference navigation architecture based on the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). The proposed performance-based discretization methodology promotes operational safety and efficiency and supports enhanced UTM operators' situational awareness under dense traffic conditions. The analysis performed demonstrates that the proposed airspace model can efficiently accommodate unmanned aircraft with varying avionics equipment and can be expanded to a full Communication, Navigation and Surveillance (CNS) performance-based approach, allowing a continuous dynamic optimisation of airspace capacity.