The Reliability of Remotely Piloted Aircraft System Performance under Aeronautical Communication Uncertainties

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how communication latency and signal loss affect the performance and reliability of remotely piloted aircraft systems, introducing a new metric to quantify tolerable communication delays.

Contribution

It develops a mathematical framework and simulation approach to evaluate RPAS performance under communication uncertainties, including a novel reliability metric called communicability.

Findings

Increased latency and signal loss significantly degrade flight performance.

The new communicability metric predicts maximum tolerable latency for safe operation.

Simulation results provide insights into trade-offs between communication quality and flight stability.

Abstract

Mission-critical operations of highly maneuverable Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) require reliable communication to ensure safe integration into existing airspace. Understanding system-level performance under stochastic communication conditions is essential for estimating mission success and assessing operational risks. This study quantifies the impact of communication latency and complete signal loss on the mission completion performance of a highly maneuverable RPAS. The mission is defined as a static waypoint tracking task in three-dimensional airspace. We first derive mathematical formulations for key reliability metrics within the Required Communication Performance (RCP) framework. These stochastic communication factors, including latency and availability, are then incorporated into flight control simulations to evaluate system behavior. Extensive multiprocessing Monte Carlo simulations are conducted using high-performance computing to generate mission success rate and mission completion time envelopes. Results show significant degradation in flight performance as communication latency increases or availability decreases, which directly reduces the system stability margin. To better characterize this relationship, we introduce a new reliability metric, communicability, which integrates three key RCP metrics and provides insight into the maximum tolerable latency for flight control. The proposed framework informs RPAS design by revealing trade-offs between communication capability and flight control performance. The code used in this study is publicly available at this \href{https://github.com/YutianPangASU/comm-dynamics}{repository}.