Radio Frequency (RF) & Wireless Design

I saw this article the other day when I was researching about the emerging 5G implementations thru the various cellular carriers:

https://www.verizon.com/about/news/era-cellular-connected-drone-has-arrived

The article is directly from Verizon's website and is possibly the largest cellular carrier in the United States.

One of the problems that arose from transporting of people during the 1920's was the coordination of airflights to avoid mid-air collisions and Verizon is also seeing that there is going to be an issue when there are thousands of drones in the air.

Their solution is a coordination mapping called Universal Traffic Management (UTM) for fully autonomous flights as described here ;

All of these capabilities represent nothing less than a new era of aviation. They will enable package carriers, airborne cabs, emergency aircraft, and other drones to begin occupying the airspace above and around our major cities. As the number of aircraft multiply in our airspace — small, large, crewed, and uncrewed — we will start to see new systems come into play for monitoring and directing all of this air traffic.

This concept is called Universal Traffic Management (UTM). Think of it as a system of systems — akin to a wireless network or the Internet — for coordinating all types of aircraft. UTM will allow aircraft to detect and avoid each other, enabling companies to deploy multiple drones at once, autonomously and from a remote location — and do so safely. This will be key for enabling dozens or hundreds of aircraft of all sizes to operate within the same airspace.

That future may still seem somewhat remote, but with the arrival of network-connected drones, we are taking a significant step toward making BVLOS flights common. UTM, as yet another step, will enable users to pre-position drones anywhere in the world — and to command and control those aircraft from many miles away, safely and reliably.

We don't normally think about and take for granted many of the safety infrastructures that make our lives safer, this is just another layer that will help drone delivery operations better.