BUBBLES Separation Management Environment: architecture and validation of a separation management tool for UTM

With the growth of unmanned aviation, there has been an increased interest, or rather need, to define a framework or ecosystem that enables safe and efficient access to airspace for a large number of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), what is known as UAS Traffic Management (UTM). The development of UTM identifies services, roles, and responsibilities, as well as information exchanges between stakeholders. Among the challenges identified by the UTM, conflict management and separation provision stand out. In this context, BUBBLES, an Exploratory Research (ER) project funded by SESAR Joint Undertaking (SJU), defines a new concept of operations (ConOps) for the separation management service, a UTM service dealing with conflict management in tactical phase. The present paper outlines this ConOps, defines the architecture of a UTM tool developed to validate the BUBBLES concept, named Separation Management Environment (SME), and presents the validation exercise performed by means of test flights.