With the exponential rise in drone activity, safely managing low-flying airspace has become challenging — especially in highly populated areas. Just last month an unauthorized drone collided with a ‘Super Scooper’ aircraft above the Los Angeles wildfires, grounding the aircraft for several days and hampering the firefighting efforts.
Traditional radar systems are powerful but cannot effectively detect low-flying aircraft below 400 feet. While the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has some regulations to manage small, unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) or drones, tracking and safety can be problematic – especially in congested or restricted airspaces. BYU researchers may have the solution.
Using a network of small, low-cost radars, engineering professor Cammy Peterson and her colleagues have built an air traffic control system for drones that can effectively and accurately track anything in an identified low-altitude airspace.
“Radar has been around for a long time,” said Karl Warnick, co-author and BYU professor of electrical and computer engineering. “Instead of having a $10 million spinning dish like you’d see at an airport, we have a simple thing that could be built for a few hundred dollars. The small radars don’t have all the capabilities of a higher-end radar, but a network of small radars can work together effectively.”
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