Challenge

The use of drones is growing rapidly as is the drone technology itself. Because of this, drones become cheaper and more affordable by the general public. This increases the concerns about privacy and illegal and dangerous use of drones. Security, besides safety, is essential for public acceptance of drone flights.

In order to facilitate safe and efficient growth of drone flights, a drone traffic management system is required that incorporates various security and safety functions. Examples include issuing alerts when drones fly through areas that they have not been authorised to fly through, when wind or weather leads to increased risk, when drones fly too close to other air traffic and so forth. By (dynamically) defining geographic areas where drone traffic will be restricted, called geo-fencing, externality costs such as accident risk and noise pollution could be minimised.

The drone traffic management solution for Europe is called U-space. Security needs to be an integral part of U-space and requires an integrated security concept that includes technological options for both airborne and ground elements, taking into account legal, regulatory and social aspects.

Objectives

The main objective of SECOPS is to define such an integrated security concept for drone operations that ensures that security risks in U-space are mitigated to an acceptable level, in particular:

1. Drones do not divert from their intended mission, due to unexpected interference.
2. Drones cannot deliberately be misused for illegal or dangerous activities.
3. Detect and act when drones are misused (by the pilot or an external party).

Activities and deliverables

The core activities include an analysis of the drone Very Low Level operational environment in order to find ways of reducing the risk of unexpected interference. Multiple drone categories will be taken into account since the technical maturity of the system influences the risk of unlawful interference. The technological options will consider navigation, surveillance, communication between air and ground, in-flight updates, network requirements, service provision options, interface with SWIM, etc. Furthermore SECOPS will develop a set of escalation procedures in case of unexpected drone activity such as issuing alerts when drones fly through areas that they have not been authorised to fly through. In the integrated security concept, geo-fencing is seen as a particularly promising technique to allow or deny any action of a drone, depending on its position. Successful deployment of such systems will increase safety and prevent unlawful activity by drone operators.

The project will include a proof of concept of the integrated security concept, integrating COTS technology of the consortium partners. A demonstration of the integrated security concept, based on a realistic scenario is performed at the Netherlands RPAS Test Centre (NRTC).

Partners

The comprehensive experience of the SECOPS partners working on drone security and geo-fencing in various Research & Technology projects and initiatives and joint national and European collaboration on multiple aerospace programs of OEMs motivate their common application: