Design of sense-and-avoid standards for RQ-7B shadow under loss-link

Abstract

Since 2008, the demand for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) within the National Airspace System (NAS) has more than doubled. The Congressional Mandate of 2012 tasked the Secretary of Transportation to develop a comprehensive plan to safely accelerate the integration of UAS into the NAS by 2014. A major concern with integration is Sense-and-Avoid (SAA) capabilities of UAS. This paper describes the design for the standard for onboard UAS sensors which meet the Target Level of Safety (TLS) of 10-7, or 1 incident in 10,000,000 flight hours, set forth by the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) System Safety Handbook (SSH). To successfully perform SAA the RQ-7B Shadow needs a total of 5.73 seconds to detect and maneuver safely to avoid an incident with another aircraft. The hardware to satisfy these design requirements is the POP300D sensor.