Separation Assurance in Urban Air Mobility Systems using Shared Scheduling Protocols
Journal:
arXiv
Published Date:
Jan 15, 2025
Abstract
Ensuring safe separation between aircraft is a critical challenge in air
traffic management, particularly in urban air mobility (UAM) environments where
high traffic density and low altitudes require precise control. In these
environments, conflicts often arise at the intersections of flight corridors,
posing significant risks. We propose a tactical separation approach leveraging
shared scheduling protocols, originally designed for Ethernet networks and
operating systems, to coordinate access to these intersections. Using a
decentralized Markov decision process framework, the proposed approach enables
aircraft to autonomously adjust their speed and timing as they navigate these
critical areas, maintaining safe separation without a central controller. We
evaluate the effectiveness of this approach in simulated UAM scenarios,
demonstrating its ability to reduce separation violations to zero while
acknowledging trade-offs in flight times as traffic density increases.
Additionally, we explore the impact of non-compliant aircraft, showing that
while shared scheduling protocols can no longer guarantee safe separation, they
still provide significant improvements over systems without scheduling
protocols.
