On Sat, 11 Feb 2012 13:24:42 +0200, Ian wrote:

On Wed, 8 Feb 2012 23:33:29 -0800 (PST), Darryl Ramm
wrote:
won't see it, and so on. One possible thing would be to require all
drones =
to transmit and receive (and relay that traffic data to the
operator) on bo=
th UAT and 1090ES link layers. Seems too late to mandate dual-link
receiver=

Why not mandate all drones to carry Flarm? That would help full the gaps
left by all the "professional" technology.

FWIW a longish paper just came out in the UK, written from the Army's
POV. They've looked carefully at the problems of operating UAVs in
uncontrolled airspace and decided that large scale adoption isn't on
within at least the next decade - if then. The main issues a

- collision avoidance: they can't see any technology that could handle
that, especially for small/lightweight/very hard to see UAVs that is
even on the horizon.

- bandwidth. Control bandwidth is trivial (an 8 channel digital RC
system uses about 32Kb/sec) but the sensor download stream is very
significant. 256 MB/sec was quoted for the big surveillance UAVs
in Afghanistan and apparently the population of UAVs there are
causing frequency allocation problems when the non-UAV bandwidth
needed by modern forces in the absence of adequate comms
infrastructure is considered.

OK, we have plenty of fibre bandwidth so fixed base comms goes away,
but the UAV dowenlink remains a big problem, especially when you
consider that so many uses, e.g. traffic and fire surveillance,
police,etc. need real-time downlinking to either a computer or an
operator. Radio bandwidth is getting crowded without a few hundred
or thousand UAVs trying to use it.

Fancy giving up your mobile phone so a UAV can operate? No? Didn't
think so.

Here's a link to the piece.

http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/F9335CB2-73FC-4761-A428-
DB7DF4BEC02C/0/20110505JDN_211_UAS_v2U.pdf


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martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
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