Advanced Air Mobility: Research Directions for Communications, Navigation, and Surveillance

Advanced air mobility (AAM) is an emerging industry focus as well as a research and development discipline. Innovations and technologies resulting from AAM will change the way that we move cargo and people in and around cities. Industry is moving fast with excitement to deploy AAM solutions. However, there are multiple technical challenges that need to be overcome before AAM becomes a reality. This article takes a closer look at the technology readiness level of AAM solutions in the area of communications, navigation, and surveillance (CNS) and identifies open research problems as well as directions to address them. In particular, we discuss current approaches and future research challenges in air corridor design, air-to-air (AA) communications, 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) support for navigation, and detect and avoid (DAA)/collision avoidance, among other areas, for supporting future AAM operations.