The growing adoption of Smart Technologies for the surveillance, imaging, monitoring, mapping etc has increased the use of Unmanned Aircrafts or Unmanned Aerial Systems. UAS is a rapid growing technology playing an important role in a wide range of application fields such as military & defence programs, civil and commercial sectors like precision agriculture, energy monitoring, security surveillance etc.
With the rapid technological advancements and increasing threats or hacking activities, the need for safer, secure, and more reliable navigation is a major concern to mitigate the risk involved in unmanned systems operations.
To ensure the security and safety of the navigation subsystems or Unmanned Aerial Systems Flight Operation in the Specific Category, UAV Navigation-Grupo Oesía together with Qascom and other partners are participating in the DEGREE project for the development of an innovative Galileo Dual-Frequency Receiver with a target TRL 7 at a competitive cost for fast market penetration.
In a recent Interview with the team of THE GPS TIME, Laura García-Junceda, UAV Navigation’s Lead Engineer at Project DEGREE and Qascom’s Sergi Dueñas Pedrosa, the Project Manager of DEGREE Project talks about DEGREE project, challenges associated with Unmanned Vehicles, What are the latest technologies that are driving the UAV Flight Control System market.
Kindly tell us about the DEGREE project and its target market.
[UAV Navigation-Grupo Oesía]:
“The DEGREE project is framed within the recently adopted regulations for UAS in the European Union. Operational risk is now the focus of the European regulatory framework, whereby Unmanned Aerial Systems operations are classified into one of three categories: open, specific, or certified, each with its own operational constraints and means of authorisation.
Most UAS can be directly employed for the open category that, considering the risks involved, does not require prior authorisation by the competent authority nor a declaration by the Unmanned Aerial Systems operator before the flight. However, technology development and EU investments in GNSS receivers are now focusing on the requirements related to the specific category in terms of the security and safety of the navigation subsystems. This is due to the high added value of the multiple operations included in this category.
In this context, Galileo-based solutions with the support of robust and assured navigation will be key enablers, especially for applications requiring flights in urban environments. The DEGREE project will support this strategy, with the objective of developing a Galileo GNSS receiver that meets the requirements for unlocking all possible risk levels for these kinds of operations.”
[QASCOM]:
“At the technical level, a state-of-the-art GNSS receiver with target TRL 7 is being developed to fulfil all user requirements derived from specific category operations. The receiver is based on a Zynq-7000 SDR platform and an innovative RF frontend, including an IMU and a secondary GNSS receiver integrated inside the main one.
The platform is based on a dual-frequency multi-constellation in several configurations. The user can configure the receiver to operate in L1/E1 + L5/E5a or L1/E1 + E6. On the one hand, using the E1 enables the receiver to exploit the Galileo E1 Open Service Navigation Message Authentication service (OSNMA) to increase robustness against spoofing attacks. On the other hand, by using an E6 configuration, the receiver positioning performance is enhanced by means of the Galileo E6 High Accuracy Services (HAS), where free-of-charge Precise Point Positioning (PPP) corrections are transmitted in Galileo E6 C/NAV pages to correct satellite orbits, clocks, and bias from GPS and Galileo constellations.
Lastly, the receiver also focuses on integrity by employing state-of-the-art anti-jamming and anti-spoofing techniques exploiting SDR capabilities, as well as a novel approach for RAIM algorithms tailored to Unmanned Aerial Systems.”
[UAV Navigation-Grupo Oesía]:
“The DEGREE project is funded by the European Union Space Agency (EUSPA) for the Space Program as a result of the great efforts being made by the European Union. The DEGREE consortium comprises UAV Navigation-Grupo Oesía (UAVNGO), Acorde and EuroUSC as subcontractors, and Qascom as prime contractor.”
As UAV Navigation is now a part of this consortium, how is the company contributing towards this project?
[UAV Navigation-Grupo Oesía]:
“UAV Navigation-Grupo Oesía is a 100% Spanish capital, private, and independent company that has specialised in the design of guidance, navigation and control solutions for unmanned aerial vehicles since 2004. As part of the DEGREE consortium, the company is contributing to different activities throughout all stages of the project. UAVNGO acts as a leader in the following three.
On the one hand, the DEGREE receiver will be integrated into the flight control system of UAVNGO to validate the algorithms and navigation solutions in a representative environment. For this purpose, multiple real test flights will be conducted in Galileo-only mode and in multi-constellation modes. The procedures used for flight testing are designed to be compliant with the EASA regulations for UAV operations.
On the other hand, the experience acquired by the company over more than 15 years allows it to have a privileged view of the Unmanned Aerial Systems sector. This is also quite useful, mostly during the initial phases of the project, in which UAVNGO participates in the analysis and identification of the main needs and technological challenges to be faced. The user requirements analysis in the DEGREE activity addresses both technical requirements applicable to GNSS Signal in Service and service performance for UAS applications, technical requirements applicable to equipment, including airworthiness requirements, and operational requirements, which define the global conditions for using the radio navigation service.
Last but not least, UAVNGO also undertakes the dissemination of the project by identifying the main actors and stakeholders and coordinating with the consortium in the achievement of the dissemination objectives, including support for the commercial exploitation, raising awareness on the research innovation of the project, contributing to the standardisation and receiver guidelines, meeting potential users and clients and communicating to the citizens the benefit of the adoption of the DEGREE solution.”
What are the challenges associated with Unmanned Vehicles or Unmanned Aerial Systems for daily usage, and how is this consortium addressing them?
[UAV Navigation-Grupo Oesía]:
“Unmanned Aerial Systems are playing an increasingly important role in home security strategy and defence programs around the world. Traditionally, systems for civil and commercial applications have seen fewer development efforts. However, the potential applications are growing day by day and represent a clear business trend in the near horizon.
The main idea is that safety remains the top priority and the biggest threshold for the massive eruption of UAS in multiple applications. Technologies associated with the guidance, navigation and control solutions must comply with the established quality assurance levels, and a trade-off solution must be found to achieve it affordably. Fortunately, we see a clear trend in this direction with the new EUROCAE working groups and the new European regulations, where different categories are already identified, based on the associated risk of the operation. Quantitative criteria are beginning to be defined, which will allow for the safe integration of Unmanned Aerial Systems into non-segregated airspace and into the U-Space.
The DEGREE solution is targeting the market of “commercial users” that requires a high-end customisable product for professional applications (e.g., infrastructure monitoring, oil/gas pipeline inspection, emergency management, delivery and transport, and aerial photography). Most commercial applications will likely be classified in the specific category, for which the operator will need to apply for an operational authorisation based on a risk assessment. The development of the DronEborne Galileo RecEivEr (DEGREE) will support this strategy with high flexibility and adaptability to risk assessment processes to allow the safe delivery of flight operations.
In this sense, the DEGREE consortium sees regulation as an opportunity rather than as a market barrier: GNSS systems that demonstrate high redundancy and fault tolerance, as promulgated by the regulations, will be facilitated in the acquisition of the certification from EASA and the consequent “permit to flight” from its national aviation security agencies.”
[QASCOM]:
“At the technical level, Unmanned Aerial Systems operations are under constant threats. For instance, imagine a last-mile delivery service where a UAV fleet delivers parcels into the city centre. In urban canyon conditions, the GNSS solution degrades fast, really fast. Fewer satellites in view worsen the accuracy of the platform. Multipath from surrounding objects leads to loss of lock with the remaining satellites and disrupts the final computed position. Unintentional (or intentional) interference from other electromagnetic systems causes denial of GNSS service, and more sophisticated spoofing attacks could change the course of the UAV, kidnapping critical parcels to unintended locations.
To address all these threats, the consortium relies on an SDR platform based on the Zynq-7000 family in which state-of-the-art algorithms permit the monitoring and mitigation of multipath, jamming and spoofing attacks, as well as including the latest Galileo services such as E1 OSNMA and E6 HAS to enable specific category operations in challenging environments as the one described previously.”
Can you share some details about DEGREE Project?
[UAV Navigation-Grupo Oesía]:
“The DEGREE project’s objective is to develop an innovative Galileo Dual-Frequency receiver with a target TRL 7 at a competitive cost for fast market penetration.
Specific hardware components are being developed and manufactured by the consortium, as well as the integration of the latest technology in inertial measurements and a secondary GNSS receiver for redundancy purposes. Taking the experience of Qascom and Acorde, the receiver has the key differentiators, including a dual GNSS receiver and dual antenna hardware architecture that supports all GNSS constellations (i.e., Galileo, GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, QZSS, and SBAS), an assured navigation engine to enable precise positioning and advanced integrity protection using state-of-the-art anti-spoofing techniques, and support for the Galileo OSNMA, Galileo E6 High Accuracy Service, and L1/L5 SBAS.
The DEGREE receiver will be integrated with the flight control system provided by UAV Navigation-Grupo Oesía. The procedures used for flight testing are designed to comply with the EASA regulations for UAV operations. For its part, EuroUSC will act as an expert in the field of Unmanned Aerial Systems regulations and Specific Operations Risk Assessment (SORA), helping to identify the needs of the UAS sector in terms of European regulations for the specific category up to SAIL IV according to SORA methodology.
Based on these considerations, our consortium aims to become a major GNSS receiver player in the UAS-specific category market and leverage the Galileo system, particularly the new high accuracy and authentication services, as an enabler for worldwide market penetration and a contributor to the safety and security standardisation for Unmanned Aerial Systems to facilitate the product penetration in the market and its certification.”
[QASCOM]:
“The DEGREE project successfully achieved the Critical Design Review (CDR) at the end of December 2022. Now under the development phase, unit tests are scheduled within the next month, targeting real flight tests with UAVNGO as a lead and Qascom and Acorde as a support, by the end of this year.”
What are the latest technologies that are driving the UAV Flight Control System market?
[UAV Navigation-Grupo Oesía]:
“UAS are a rapidly growing technology with a wide range of applications that require an increasingly safer, secure, and more reliable navigation. Systems on which the flight control system relies must be designed to operate in a hostile environment, where it becomes essential to provide the systems with the identification capability and the necessary resilience to mitigate malicious attacks.
At this point, GNSS systems play an important role as they are seen as the main navigation and surveillance tool for open and specific categories, with artificial vision and other non-GNSS sensors serving to fill gaps in GNSS signal availability. This is because, in addition to its high performance, low weight and ubiquity for open sky operations, the importance of GNSS also arises from the fact that it is strongly related to specific functionalities which will be essential for most commercial applications (especially for BVLOS operations) to comply with the upcoming U-Space regulations. Such functionalities include Geo-Awareness capability and Detect and Avoid or surveillance capabilities such as E-identification. With all this, we could say that GNSS acts as a cornerstone for the operability of Unmanned Aerial Systems both in the present and in the immediate future.
For their part, the HAS and OSNMA technologies of the Galileo GNSS system aim to address these challenges and even revolutionise Unmanned Aerial Systems operations in the near future. On the one hand, the Galileo High Accuracy Service or HAS will provide free of charge high-precision point positioning corrections via the E6-B Galileo signal. On the other hand, the Open Service Navigation Message Authentication technology or OSNMA is focused on providing authentication for the GNSS navigation system to enable the detection of unexpected sequences and make the system robust to cyber-attacks such as spoofing.
Finally, research should continue on combined technologies that allow the intelligent fusion of different sources of information to avoid simple points of failure or excessive dependence on a single system. Also, new algorithms that allow greater autonomy and real-time decision-making capability for the platforms are identified as a clear need in the future. In this sense, new advances in artificial intelligence and computational and communication capabilities will allow onboard processing. The way in which these communications will be protected and the ethical implications that intelligent and autonomous systems entail will be key points to be addressed.”
