AURA to Research Critical Communications in National Airspace

February 01, 2022

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AURA Network Systems (AURA) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have entered into a four-year Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) to help research performance standards for Air Traffic Control (ATC) voice communications supporting unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) or drones within the national airspace system (NAS). The project will inform eventual regulations empowering applications ranging from cargo flights to infrastructure inspections and first-responder operations.

This agreement follows an impressive 2021 for AURA. The company’s milestones last year included being invited by the FAA to participate in the UAS Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) Rulemaking Committee, which is tasked to provide recommendations to the FAA for performance-based regulatory requirements to normalize safe, scalable, economically viable and environmentally advantageous UAS BVLOS operations that are not under positive air traffic control.

In addition, in 2021, a Federal Communications Commission ruling allowed AURA to expand its network to foster UAS operations at all altitudes across the nation. The company has also been selected by NASA as a National Campaign partner to work towards integrating air taxies, cargo-delivery aircraft and revolutionary air-vehicle concepts into the national airspace system (NAS).

The research, expected to get underway this month, is designed to inform RTCA DO-377 Minimum Aviation System Performance Standards (MASPS) for Air Traffic Control (ATC) voice communications supporting UAS operations within the NAS. RTCA (previously Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics) develops technical guidance for both government regulatory authorities and industry.

“AURA considers it a privilege to continue working with the FAA and other federal agencies to enhance the commercial viability of the UAS market,” said Cofounder and CEO Bill Tolpegin. “We look forward to utilizing our secure, private network to deliver our ATC voice solution and, ultimately, our beyond visual line of sight capabilities to support advanced levels of autonomy for safe UAS integration into the national airspace.”

This public-private collaborative research will be conducted at the FAA’s William J. Hughes Technical Center, located near Atlantic City, N.J. “This collaboration with the nation’s premier transportation system laboratory allows us to work with both regulators and innovators on the path to unlocking the tremendous potential of UAS," said Tamara Casey, Cofounder and President of AURA.

The project will measure latency and evaluate voice quality/speech intelligibility of air-to-ground radio-path transmissions between UAS pilots and FAA voice-switch air traffic controller positions.

Source : AURA Network Systems