A cloud-assisted ADS-B network for UAVs based on SDR

TL;DR

This paper proposes a cloud-assisted ADS-B network for UAVs using SDR technology, enhancing traditional systems with low-cost transceivers and a network of SDR-based gateways to improve UAV surveillance.

Contribution

It introduces a novel cloud-based UAV surveillance system that emulates ADS-B signals using SDR gateways, addressing limitations of conventional ADS-B for small and low-altitude UAVs.

Findings

Preliminary performance analysis highlights key tradeoffs.

Laboratory implementation demonstrates feasibility with off-the-shelf SDR hardware.

System effectively emulates true ADS-B signals for UAVs.

Abstract

Integration of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or "drones" into the civil aviation airspace is a problem of increasing interest in the aviation community, as testified by many initiatives developed worldwide. Many traditional surveillance solutions for manned aircrafts employ the Automatic Dependent System-Broadcast (ADS-B) technology, which however might present several drawbacks when used for UAVs, especially smaller ones and/or those flying at very low altitudes. We present in this paper a cloud-based surveillance solution for UAVs, which can be considered as an enhancement of a conventional ADS-B system. The proposed solution leverages inexpensive on-board transceivers for transmitting positional messages from the UAVs to the ground. A network of ADS-B gateways, based on the software-defined radio (SDR) paradigm, format the positional messages into valid ADS-B signals and rebroadcast them in the air, allowing thus to emulate a true ADS-B system and overcoming the main disadvantages of the conventional implementation. A preliminary performance analysis of the proposed approach, based on queuing theory, shows the main tradeoffs of the considered approach. Moreover, a physical-layer laboratory implementation of the proposed solution is presented, based on off-the-shelf SDR hardware, which is programmed using the open-source GNU Radio environment.