Development of critical enablers for Unmanned Traffic Management

Sammanfattning: As the interest in drones continues to grow in both commercial and leisure markets, governments around the world are preparing to face the new challenges arising from unmanned operations. Safe and efficient handling of this novel drone traffic warrants an Unmanned Traf-fic Management (UTM) system capable of dealing with the envisioned high traffic densities. In this dissertation, we identify and address several topics critical for future UTM system development, specifically in the areas of airspace and traffic management. Our work on airspace management includes comparing different airspace designs, developing a risk-management concept inspired by performance-based navigation (PBN), and proposing algorithms for establishing a common altitude reference system. Our contributions to unmanned traffic management include comparing different conflict detection and resolution (CD&R) strategies, developing risk-aware routing algorithms, and proposing an approach for planning mass-scale operations with focus on medical use. We obtained these results primarily through quantitative methods, including mathematical modeling, design and analysis of algorithms, and numerical simulations. With this work, we aim to build a strong foundation for the development of future UTM and discuss directions for future research.