Geo-fencing to secure airport perimeter against sUAS

Abstract

Purpose

Small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) are becoming increasingly popular among hobbyists, and with this popularity there comes the risk of runway incursion between a commercial aircraft and sUAS around airports. To keep airports safe and secure, the purpose of this paper is to propose a module, called the Airport Secure Perimeter Control System, that can be attached to every hobbyist’s sUAS for the purpose of notification and prevention.

Design/methodology/approach

Upon startup, the module connects to a database containing the central coordinates of every airport in the USA. A five-mile critical radius plus an additional one-mile buffer region is established around each point. The buffer region is created in order to inform the user that he/she is approaching a safe airspace and needs to take corrective action. Once the five-mile zone has been breached, autopilot software takes over the manual controls, and the sUAS is landed in a controlled manner, while the user still has lateral control of the vehicle in order to avoid any potential hazards below it. Then, both operator and airport receive messages about the event.

Findings

To demonstrate the proposed design, a prototype was developed that successfully implemented this system, and was formally tested within a controlled environment.

Originality/value

This solution would drastically reduce the security threat of sUAS breaching the critical regions surrounding airports, and its implementation is relatively simple.

Citation

Boselli, C., Danis, J., McQueen, S., Breger, A., Jiang, T., Looze, D. and Ni, D. (2017), "Geo-fencing to secure airport perimeter against sUAS", International Journal of Intelligent Unmanned Systems, Vol. 5 No. 4, pp. 102-116. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJIUS-02-2017-0002