Attachment B - Summary of Workshop Results.pdf

Attachment B – Summary of Workshop Results

Communication, Navigation, Surveillance and Security Workshop

(August 29 – 30, 2024)

Communication, navigation, surveillance and security (CNS&S) are widely recognized as key components of advanced air mobility (AAM). Over the past several years, identifying candidate CNS&S research efforts and requirements that would yield notable impacts has proven challenging. To gain an understanding and insights into this challenging domain, NASA’s Airspace Operations and Safety

Program (AOSP) partnered with NASA Glenn Research Center to host a CNS&S workshop with some 60 in-person participants from industry, academia, and other government agencies. The purpose of the workshop was to gather information from across the AAM community to advance AAM programmatic objectives and inform next steps.

Preliminary Findings and Recommendations

NASA obtained information regarding AAM data service requirements, identified barriers associated with mid-term AAM operations, gained insight into potential government and industry roles & responsibilities, and the challenges associated with RF spectrum. Preliminary results of polling data and discussions pointed to two key findings: (1) potential changes to the notional urban air mobility architecture may be necessary to address passenger welfare and to enable cooperative conflict management; and (2) there are cybersecurity implementation and governance challenges associated with xTM due to a federated architecture using services provided by industry. A key recommendation from industry feedback was for

NASA to coalesce the stakeholders by developing community informed strategic products such as a roadmap to AAM midterm operations focusing on CNS and security.

A summary of preliminary findings is categorized as follows:

1. Areas where consensus was identified across the AAM community regarding CNS capabilities.

2. Barriers and technical challenges

3. Areas where differing viewpoints were expressed among the AAM community

4. Role that NASA can play in the future/next steps.

Consensus Areas Identified Across the AAM Community Regarding CNS Capabilities

Workshop participants were largely in agreement on the importance of numerous communication system capabilities, and this information will inform AAM ConOps and architecture.

• AAM operators will require many more data services beyond C2 to carry passengers, but these additional services have received little to no attention and resources by industry and the standards bodies.

• Communication services beyond traditional C2 (command and control) is required and must be supported by the infrastructure.

o There was broad consensus regarding the need for communications to support passenger welfare, including the capability for passengers to remain “connected” during the flight.

o Examples of communication links beyond traditional C2 include: V2V (deconfliction), passenger and aircraft security, supplementary services to mitigate emergency scenarios, A/C to infrastructure data (PNT, updated flight data, routing), vehicle health and maintenance data, digital twin, etc.

o A quote from the workshop: “We hear about things going wrong currently, and this is with a pilot on-board. Take the pilot off – this requires more and more data on and off the vehicle with the appropriate latency”.

• Recognition that V2V comms will be needed to support tactical deconfliction. Need to assess how close vehicles can get to one another.

o Polling results indicated strong support for direct V2V links between aircraft versus routing V2V data through air-to-ground infrastructure. Results also showed consensus on using V2V communications to support automated collision avoidance functions without the pilot in the loop.

• There was an openness to utilize multiple communication services throughout a flight instead of utilizing one dedicated service from pre-takeoff to landing.

• There was strong support for a direct link between aircraft and vertiports, primarily to assist in the safe landing of aircraft during lost link conditions.

Barriers and Technical Challenges Recognized Across the AAM Community

There was high level of agreement among workshop participants on significant challenges and barriers that impact the ability to safely integrate AAM vehicles into the airspace at scale.

• Spectrum availability o The tradeoff between spectrum and functionality was noted. As CNS&S capabilities increase, so too does the demand for spectrum.

o Workshop raised awareness of the need for comm bandwidth to support functionality beyond C2.

o It was noted that security overhead on comm links also impacts spectrum usage/burden.

o Concern over the retention of current aviation spectrum was also expressed, especially in

NTIA’s presentation of the White House National Spectrum Strategy initiative.

• Surveillance methods and technologies o Information and technologies to enable safe separation in high density (urban), high interference, low altitude environments.

o For detect and avoid, alternative methods, their applicability and how each impacts spectrum requirements need to be identified, performance tested, and limitations assessed.

• Navigation in GPS denied scenarios o GPS signal can be lost due to multipath or obstructions, etc. Identify and assess alternate navigation methods and technologies, their applicability and impact on spectrum. Test performance and limitations.

o Participants reiterated the need for alternative sources of position and timing data outside of GPS. This is a mandate from the White House.

▪ 2020: Executive Order on Strengthening National Resilience through

Responsible Use of Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Services

▪ 2024: National Security Memorandum on Critical Infrastructure Security and

Resilience

• Non-Cooperative traffic management o Identify and assess methods and technologies to mitigate risks.

• Vertiport scaling o Communications and navigation challenges associated with high density operations and interference in vicinity of vertiport.

• How to accommodate advancements in autonomy and AI as we develop architectures and technologies – pathway for adoption.

o How to prove utility, reliability, and safety?

o Take care that initial rules are not too constraining given once in place, hard to pull back.

Areas Where Differing Viewpoints Were Identified Among Workshop Participants

• Spectrum sharing o Industry panelists disagreed on the prospect of sharing aviation spectrum with secondary users.

▪ View 1: regulatory and political pressure to share spectrum will continue to grow and we should figure out how to safely share the historically underutilized aviation allocations.

▪ View 2: allocations should be protected because of the safety concerns. This topic impacts standards development.

• Role of real-time video o Poll results show a lack of consensus on whether emergency stick-and-rudder functionality (requires video feed) should be available. Similar results were tallied for external-facing video to be used under any circumstances because video drives communication bandwidth requirements.

• Need for vehicle health data o Polls and discussions indicate that industry is accepting of on-board automation to monitor the health and status of the aircraft. Vehicle would report to the RPIC when something needs their attention versus sending raw vehicle data to the ground for off-board analysis.

NASA’s Role and Next Steps – As Suggested by Workshop Participants

There appears to be a leadership void needed to coalesce the AAM community and drive comprehensive solutions. There was support from workshop attendees for NASA to fill this void.

• Multiple participants support efforts to define an AAM ConOps, develop conceptual architecture, model/analyze architecture, and assess technologies to understand future state so that requirements can be developed.

o Need to coalesce around a common concept to focus the community and understand fundamental challenges.

o Identify things that we agree on; identify unknowns, prioritize and de-risk.

o Prototyping/testing technologies will help identify challenges and inform requirements.

• NASA could lead development of approach to optimize spectrum usage.

o Decompose communication functions into safety critical vs. non-safety critical. Assess data needs/types (informed by industry), and spectrum constraints and determine how best to deploy infrastructure.

• Prioritize barriers/challenges and initiate studies/analyses or targeted efforts to inform open questions. One of these could be the subject of the next workshop (informed by study results or progress to date).

• Enhance simulation and emulation infrastructure to analyze AAM CNS architecture and study the performance of candidate technologies to inform solutions and requirements. Validate concepts and technologies via test and demonstration to inform requirements.

• Engage the non-aviation communications industry (e.g., cellular, satcom) to assess viability of leveraging significant R&D investments against the needs of the AAM industry. The AAM industry is too small to develop all its infrastructure from scratch, and the communications industry is too big to be concerned with AAM. NASA can bridge this gap.

Suggestions for Next Workshop:

• Navigation – PNT alternatives and how to apply them. Include broader industry participants from this domain.

• Surveillance – analysis of alternatives and associated impact on spectrum.

• AI – application of AI in aerospace and how to prove utility and safety. Review FAA AI Roadmap and give overview.

• CNS ConOps and architecture.

• Strategy on spectrum usage.

• Vertiport scaling – deep dive into this area addressing technical challenges associated with high density and interference.