Remote ID for Rapid Assessment of Flight and Vehicle Information

The ability to rapidly identify UAS (Unmanned Aircraft Systems) in the field has emerged as a critical need for the integration of small UASs into the national airspace and counter-UAS operations. This paper proposes an architecture for rapid retrieval of UAS information leveraging NASA's current Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) system. The proposed architecture utilizes UTM components: FIMS (Flight Information Management System), USS (UAS Service Supplier), and vehicle registration and model database in order to provide assessment of the UAS reported in the field including the ability to distinguish between participating and non- participating UTM actors. Detailed system descriptions are provided and preliminary results from field tests conducted during UTM TCL (Technical Capability Level) 3 are discussed. It is found that 94 percent of the remote ID look-ups were successful. The average time of a look-up is found to be 1.2 seconds. Failure cases are examined and recommendations on next steps to advance UAS remote identification are provided.