Researchers will develop spectrum technologies for safer, more reliable communication for drones and air taxis

LAWRENCE — In a few short years your retail orders and even medical care may arrive via drone delivery. You might hop aboard an air taxi to glide to an important business meeting. Meanwhile, a drone-delivered defibrillator might save a neighbor’s life because it came before the ambulance.

But all these drones will need excellent communication to operate safely and dependably.

Now, with a $760,000 research grant from the National Science Foundation, investigators at the University of Kansas will develop “intelligent spectrum management frameworks” to enable reliable communication for drones as they become more ubiquitous. To this end, they’ll test a slice of interference-protected, aviation-grade electromagnetic spectrum now being assessed for drone use by the Federal Communications Commission.

“The FCC has proposed repurposing the 5030–5091 MHz ‘C-band’ for drone use cases. Our goal is to study how to use this spectrum band efficiently,” said Morteza Hashemi, associate professor of electrical engineering & computer science at KU, who will direct the work planned under the NSF award. “They’re looking to allocate this spectrum band to the UAVs so that they’d have interference-protected communication links for reliable data transfer between a UAV and a ground control station."

Hashemi and his KU colleagues — Shawn Keshmiri, the Charles E. & Mary Jane Spahr Professor in Aerospace Engineering, and Tarun Sabarwal, professor of economics and director of Center for Analytical Research in Economics — will develop a Dynamic Frequency Management System (DFMS) that coordinates spectrum access in this frequency band. Their project is dubbed “AeroSpec: An Adaptive Spectrum Framework for Autonomous Aerial Systems.”

“There’s only around 60 MHz available in the frequency band under consideration by the FCC, so efficient spectrum allocation and usage is very important to support more drone operators and improve spectrum utilization,” Hashemi said.

In considering technical challenges, Hashemi and his collaborators will develop spectrum coexistence algorithms, artificial intelligence-based spectrum sensing techniques and decentralized “advance-reservation” market systems.

The KU researcher said third-party service providers will enable dynamic, time- and location-based spectrum access for drone operators, creating a dynamic “pay-as-you-fly” market for drone operations.

According to Hashemi, a future with more drones in the skies would benefit Americans with quicker deliveries, faster personal transportation and more timely emergency response. In rural, tribal and agricultural areas, benefits could be even weightier.

“Time-sensitive deliveries, like medical supplies to remote communities or tribal nations, can take hours today,” Hashemi said. “Drones (UAVs) are especially valuable in rural areas, where long distances and limited infrastructure slow ground transport. And in disaster-affected regions, they can deliver supplies, extend communications and provide situational awareness for public safety teams.”

In addition to developing dynamic spectrum access algorithms, the team will conduct actual multi-UAV flight tests, taking place at KU’s Flight Research Lab and aerospace engineering department.

"Our objective is not only developing dynamic spectrum algorithms for UAVs, but also testing and validating those algorithms using real systems,” Hashemi said. “We’re going to flight-test multiple UAVs sending and receiving data. We will examine the bandwidth and spectrum requirements by collecting measurements under various conditions. The flight test will involve multiple UAVs flying at the same time for extensive wireless channel measurements in this frequency band and to assess whether dynamic spectrum policy could meet safety and regulatory requirements.”

In addition to development of better technology for drone communications, the project aims to train the next generation of researchers in the field across several disciplines.

“Graduate and undergraduate students are the engine of our research,” Hashemi said. “This project is highly interdisciplinary, which will require the students to work across departments, from engineering to economics. This will better prepare the next generation of the U.S. workforce, as they can collaborate with other disciplines beyond their primary field of study.”