ULTRAS
Urban Air Transport Simulation
| Contact | Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Volker Turau |
| Staff | Shashini Thamarasie Wanniarachchi |
| Start | 1. May 2021 |
| Financing | BMWi - LUFO VI |
Project Description
The ULTRAS project aims to evaluate the possibilities and risks to develop an integrated solution proposal of an urban air mobility (UAM) system for the Hamburg metropolitan region. To this end, 4D trajectories planned on the operating routes from specific demand and complying with the capacity restrictions are transferred to a fast-time simulation. This way, the unmanned air taxis could autonomously separate the vehicles equipped with position accuracy tolerances and thus exclude collisions. Vehicle dynamics and flight controllers are simulated, as are redundant sensors and real-time communication between vehicles and with a ground control center. The simulation results will be evaluated under different technical aspects, economic benefits as well as costs and environmental impacts. Under the criteria of acceptance and economic viability, an overall societal evaluation will be made. Finally, recommendations for action will be derived.
In this project, the Institute of Telematics will be contributing under three major sectors. First, the implementation of communication focuses on investigating how very high bandwidth communication networks, precisely 5G standards can support the implementation of an urban air transportation concept. Secondly, investigating how to achieve the performance and reliability of the sensor system required in a UAM system for safe operation. And finally, a simulator will be developed for the verification of communication and sensor models for UAM concepts based on OMNeT++ discrete event simulator. This will be then integrated into the overall simulation chain (RCE chain) of the project. Thus, enabling the simulation of the entire system and contributing to the overall evaluation of UAM concepts.
Project Partners
- TUHH - Institute of Air Transportation Systems
- TUHH - Institute of Control Systems
- TUHH - Institute for Transport Planning and Logistics
Publications
Shashini Thamarasie Wanniarachchi and Volker Turau. A Fault-Tolerant Distributed Air-to-Ground Communication Architecture for Urban Air Mobility. In In Proceedings of 19th International Conference on Distributed Computing in Smart Systems and the Internet of Things (DCOSS-IoT), IEEE, June 2023, pp. 639–646. Pafos, Cyprus.
@InProceedings{Telematik_dcoss_2023,
author = {Shashini Thamarasie Wanniarachchi and Volker Turau},
title = {A Fault-Tolerant Distributed Air-to-Ground Communication Architecture for Urban Air Mobility},
booktitle = {In Proceedings of 19th International Conference on Distributed Computing in Smart Systems and the Internet of Things (DCOSS-IoT)},
pages = {639-646},
publisher = {IEEE},
day = {19-21},
month = jun,
year = 2023,
location = {Pafos, Cyprus},
}
Abstract:
With the increasing demand for urban passenger transportation, the concept urban air mobility (UAM) has gained a lot of research interest. One idea is to employ fully autonomous air crafts. That is, using unmanned and not remotely piloted aerial vehicles as a means of mass transit. Clearly, fully autonomous air taxis constitute a safety critical, time sensitive application. Efficient information management is a prominent requirement and the infrastructure for sensing and fast, reliable communication is the key to mitigate any harm in the aforesaid approach. Nevertheless, failures in such a system are inevitable and need to be addressed. This work investigates the significant aspect of building a fault-tolerant UAM communication network. We introduce a concept of distributed ground station architecture and a protocol for role delegation to improve system availability. This assures an uninterrupted service continuation fulfilling the high standards of safety requirements in an UAM system.
Shashini Thamarasie Wanniarachchi and Volker Turau. A Study on the Influence of 5G Network planning on communication in Urban Air Mobility. In Proceedings of 24th {IEEE} International Symposium on a World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks, WoWMoM 2023, IEEE, June 2023, pp. 394–399. Boston, USA.
@InProceedings{Telematik_wowmom_2023,
author = {Shashini Thamarasie Wanniarachchi and Volker Turau},
title = {A Study on the Influence of 5G Network planning on communication in Urban Air Mobility},
booktitle = {Proceedings of 24th {IEEE} International Symposium on a World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks, WoWMoM 2023},
pages = {394-399},
publisher = {IEEE},
day = {12-15},
month = jun,
year = 2023,
location = {Boston, USA},
}
Abstract:
The emerging implementation of urban air mobility (UAM) is in need of a robust low latency communication system. The key priority is to cope with the required high level of safety assurance. 5G communication standards lay the foundation for a promising communication infrastructure, yet there exists the challenge of connectivity and coverage through the base station network. In this paper, we address this aspect and study the realization of a reliable and efficient 5G base station plan and evaluate its influence on the performance of the UAM communication system through simulations. Our findings can assist in real UAM deployment scenarios to search for the most cost effective radio network planning solution. We focus on the 3d-channel model and on the number and placement of base stations. As a use case we consider the Hamburg metropolitan region.