U-Space Utilisation of Airspace under Various Layer Function Assignments and Allocations

U-Space Utilisation of Airspace under Various Layer Function Assignments and Allocations

Morfin Veytia, A. (TU Delft Control & Simulation)
Badea, C. (TU Delft Control & Simulation)
Patrinopoulou, Niki (University of Patras)
Daramouskas, Ioannis (University of Patras)
Ellerbroek, Joost (TU Delft Control & Simulation)
Lappas, Vaios (University of Athens)
Kostopoulos, Vassilios (University of Patras)
Hoekstra, J.M. (TU Delft Control & Simulation)

2023

The interest in urban air mobility as a potential solution for urban congestion is steadily growing. Air operations in urban areas can present added complexity as compared with traditional air traffic management. As a result, it is necessary to test and develop novel airspace designs and rules. As airspace in urban areas is a scarce resource, creating structures and rules that effectively utilise the airspace is an important challenge. This work specifically focuses on layered airspace design in urban operations constrained to fly between the existing buildings. Two design parameters of airspace design are investigated with two sub-experiments. Sub-experiment 1 investigates layer function assignment by comparing concepts from previous research with different layer assignment distributions. Sub-experiment 2 investigates the flight rules of vertical distribution of traffic within the airspace, to determine whether this is best achieved in a static (pre-allocated) or dynamic manner. Both sub-experiments analyse the overall system safety, route duration, and route distance under increasing traffic demand. Results reveal that the importance of cruising airspace is apparent at high densities. Results also shows that the safest layer allocation flight rule depends on the traffic density. At lower densities dynamic rules help to spread traffic locally. However, when the airspace is saturated it is safer to pre-allocate flight heights if achieved uniformly.

U-space
UTM
airspace design
airspace management
urban air mobility
BlueSky

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:cfa718fc-0e3d-44ac-8217-2d0b1d325e2c

https://doi.org/10.3390/drones7070444

Drones, 7 (7)

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2023 A. Morfin Veytia, C. Badea, Niki Patrinopoulou, Ioannis Daramouskas, Joost Ellerbroek, Vaios Lappas, Vassilios Kostopoulos, J.M. Hoekstra