Communications Standards for Unmanned Aircraft Systems: The 3GPP Perspective and Research Drivers

An unmanned aircraft system (UAS) consists of an aerial vehicle (UAV) and its controller, which use radios to communicate. While the remote controller (RC) is traditionally operated by a person who maintaining visual line sight with UAV it controls, trend moving toward long-range control autonomous operation. To enable this, reliable widely available wireless connectivity needed because only way remotely or take flight. This article surveys ongoing Third Generation Partnership Project standardization activities for enabling networked UASs. In particular, we present requirements, envisaged architecture, services be offered to/by UAVs RCs, will communicate one another, UAS traffic management (UTM), other users through cellular networks. Critical research directions relate security spectrum coexistence, among others. We identify major R&D platforms that drive communications networks applications.