New PolicyTracker Dossier on tomorrow’s spectrum challenge: drones

Like 5G, the promise of Unmanned Aerial Systems is seemingly endless. They can help fire fighters survey burning buildings, enable precision agriculture, and can even make e-commerce deliveries. Of course, they can assist in that most important function of modern life: taking selfies. But unlike 5G, there is no global consensus on which spectrum should be made available, and how. Instead, we have a patchwork of uncoordinated initiatives. Some of these are based on using existing ITU-R level allocations to aviation services, while other approaches are based on liberalising the rules for satellite and/or terrestrial mobile spectrum. Complicating the issue is the need to re-make air traffic control, itself a heavy user of spectrum, as stakeholders wonder how the legacy voice-based system of communications could cope with the coming influx of voiceless drones. In a new Dossier, we unpack these issues. It includes the following research notes:

• An introduction to low- to medium-altitude unmanned aircraft systems
• Identification of protected aviation spectrum for unmanned aircraft systems
• Identification of non-aviation spectrum for unmanned aircraft systems
• Unmanned aircraft systems: Traffic management systems and their spectrum requirements

The Dossier is available to Spectrum Research Service subscribers here.