Patent Application
20190363821
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been gaining popularity and as a result of their growing use have raised public safety concerns over their intentional and unintentional use near people and critical infrastructure such as airports, nuclear power facilities, transmission lines, bridges, sports stadiums, and the like. Recently, airports around the world have incurred direct and indirect costs from unplanned airport closures as a response to observed UAV incursions. Airplanes have been damaged in flight by UAV incursions, posing a serious safety risk to passengers, crew and the general public. Similarly, privacy and security concerns exist for high profile individuals, gatherings of people, and property owners where UAVs can easily circumvent current security and privacy measures.
The idea of using small, even toy drones is quite concerning to the security and defense community based on their experience with these drones in the field. This makes them particularly dangerous as a drone that is commercially available for $200 or less can inflict serious harm to a target person, crowd, or infrastructure. By way of example, opposing forces in the current conflict in the middle east used a DJI drone to determine where the soldiers where located; the Prime Minister of Japan had a sampling of nuclear waste from Fukushima dropped on his front lawn; and many other similar incidents have occurred. So while the disclosure includes them by way of example, these small toys can inflict asymmetric damage. Small UAVs can be used for spying, carrying biologically catastrophic payloads, weapons, and the like. A DJI Phantom 3, for example, can carry 500 g of C4 explosive which bears approximately 3.25×106 joules of energy. Placed at a targeted location, a task ideally suited for small UAVs, can cause serious damage to any critical infrastructure.
While a new field of UAV detection is emerging, there is no effective solution for mitigating unwanted UAV incursions due to the complex legal framework in many jurisdictions around the world. For example, in the United States, airborne UAVs fall within the jurisdiction of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), whereas many of the agencies dealing with the aforementioned safety and security concerns are separately regulated. In these jurisdictions, it is illegal to interfere with an aircraft while in flight. Only duly authorized persons can affect interference with an aircraft, and even then, only when rigorous conditions have been satisfied.
Small UAVs pose a challenge to the conventional airspace system given their size, manoeuvrability, typical flight altitudes, and wide-spread use by practically anyone was not contemplated in the original airspace control framework.
In a normally functioning airspace control system, interception responses to situations involving conventionally-operated aircraft are readily handled. For example, aircraft can be radar identified and confirmed easily as to deviations from their expected course, or potential violations to restricted airspace. Small UAVs, however, cannot be readily handled by the current airspace control system. For example, UAVs cannot easily be radar identified; those who do detect a UAV incursion often have nothing to do with the national or local airspace management system. By the time an interception order is given, it is often too late. Furthermore, current interception orders result in scrambling fighter jets, which are ineffective in dealing with small, low-flying UAVs.
Given the complexity of expertise required and disjointed jurisdictions of authority, no single department is equipped to or authorized to deal with the problem. Needless to say, this complex legal loophole has enabled incursions to continue, creating a growing risk to the public.
To deal with a rapidly evolving UAV incursion requires a coordinated system of separately regulated entities.
The present invention addresses these issues and enables User Agencies, including law enforcement, businesses, homeowners, and other individuals with a vested interest to enable rapid interception of offending UAVs by ensuring that communications to and from a command center with drones of many different types using different communications protocols is established and is reliable.
Present command and control (C2) capabilities have been designed to remotely pilot an aircraft unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV. These C2 capabilities traditionally utilize an unlicensed segment of the radio-frequency spectrum, typically an Industrial, Scientific, and Medical band (902-928 MHz, 2.4-2.4835 GHz, 5.725-5.828 GHz) or an U-NII band (5.15-5.25 GHz, 5.25-5.35 GHz, 5.47-5.725 GHz, 5.725-5.825 GHz, 57-64 GHz). These RF bands are attractive and utilized since there is no license fee to use them, and they have sufficient bandwidth to handle UAV C2 applications. However, these bands are shared by others, making them unreliable, shortening the effective range, lowering the effective bandwidth, introducing communications errors, increasing latency, or various combinations of these effects. The overall range of these RF bands is low, often under 1 km, and requires a radio line of sight to achieve even this range. Furthermore, the users of these RF bands are responsible for the entire infrastructure needed.
The present invention provides an elegant, relatively inexpensive solution to overcome these challenges.
In accordance with an aspect of the invention, a method is provided for communicating with a UAV having a native communications protocol, wherein the UAV includes a cellular receiver or is in proximity of a cellular receiver for receiving signals over a cellular network. The method comprises: a) receiving with the cellular receiver, a signal including command or control information over the cellular network; b) decoding the signal; c) selecting from a library of protocols, a protocol the UAV is responsive to; and, d) sending sending by retransmitting the message to the UAV using the selected protocol over a frequency band which is distinct from the received signal frequency band
In accordance with the invention there is further provided, in a system wherein a UAV has a built-in receiver for receiving command signals from a remote controller and wherein, in operation, the command signals are transmitted using a communications protocol and a messaging format at a frequency F1, a method of communication over a cellular network at a frequency F2 comprising:
i. at the UAV:
In accordance with another aspect of the invention a system is provided adapted to be coupled to a UAV having a native communications protocol or embedded within a UAV, for communicating between the UAV and a controller at a disparate location over a cellular network comprising:
In a system wherein a UAV has a built-in receiver for receiving command signals from a remote controller and wherein, in operation, the command signals are transmitted using a communications protocol and messaging format at a frequency F1, a method of communication over a cellular network at a frequency F2 comprising:
ii. at the UAV:
iii. receiving from the cellular network, an encoded message;
iv. decoding the encoded message;
and retransmitting the decoded message to the built-in receiver using the communications protocol and messaging format at frequency F1.
Exemplary embodiments of the invention will now be described in which:
A communication protocol is a system of rules that allows for communication between a controller and a UAV or between two UAVs so that information may be transmitted. The protocol defines the rules, syntax, semantics, synchronization of communication and possible recovery methods, and protocols may be implemented in software, hardware, or both.
Communicating systems use well-defined formats for exchanging various messages. Each message has an exact meaning intended to elicit a response from a range of possible responses pre-determined for that particular situation.
Multiple protocols often describe different aspects of a single communication. A group of protocols designed to work together are known as a protocol suite; when implemented in software they are called a protocol stack.
UAVs made by different manufacturers do not all use the same protocols. More specifically to UAVs, the lowest protocol layer is a physical layer, relating to hardware such as antennas, frequency bands, etc. The highest layer is the application itself which affects what a UAV's action as a result of the communication. The layers between the lowest and highest layers are tasks required to do to establish, maintain, verify, route, start/stop, etc., These functions are typically provided by 7 protocol layer; the Open Systems Interconnection 7-layer model, which stack one on the next, often referred to as a protocol stack. A particular UAV's protocol layers are its native protocol communication layers, together forming the native protocol stack.
A native UAV protocol is comprised of these same 7 layers, some of which are well-known and common in UAVs such as antennas, and some which are not common, for example, the specific pattern of frequency hopping that might be used. A preferred embodiment of this invention uses a software-defined radio (SDR) and a multi-band antenna to dynamically “re-program” it's 7 layer protocol to correspond to the manufacturer-specific protocol and its UAV-specific configuration instance.
By way of example, for the system of this invention to communicate with a target UAV made by DJI wherein the communications system comprises their Lightbridge and A3 controller products, the system would take over control by:
Thus when communication is made with an intercepting UAV to a target UAV it is done using the native communication of the target UAV, however, without the joysticks, screens, and other human-interface elements that accompany the target UAV remote control device.
The present invention provides a method and system for communicating with a UAV over a cellular network. In a preferred embodiment a module that can be attached to a UAV or embedded within during manufacture of the UAV has plurality of manufacturer protocols stored within which enable a software-defined radio to dynamically pair with an arbitrary UAV. The pairing can be done cooperatively, for example, through a user-initiated communications hand-over, or forcibly by assuming the physical, data link, network, session, and upper protocol layers of the C2 link for a given UAV at power levels exceeding the existing link.
Several methods exist for cooperative hand-over, including accessing an on-board UAV flight controller and issuing override commands. For example, drone manufacturer DJI of Shenzhen China offers an “On-board software development kit (SDK)” application-programming interface, which enables commands to be sent directly from a user-device to the system controller via a serial interface.
A forcible take-over process combines the techniques of jamming, by way of example, inserting high power in-band “noise” and spoofing, by way of masquerading as the UAV C2 device, wherein the “noise” is the spoofed C2 messages that replicate the communications protocol layers associated with the target UAV. For example, the a device on or near a target UAV would begin transmitting lower-layer such as the physical, data link, network, session layer, information to the UAV in its native protocol format but with a stronger radio-frequency signal than the existing remote control device. This causes the UAV to effectively switch communications to the spoofing device rather than the existing, but distant remote controller. As one skilled in the art will appreciate, this method avoids the dangers associated with broad-based jamming, wherein other, friendly or otherwise important communications would be impacted, and furthermore, enables active control versus a default or unpredictable behaviour of the UAV should it's primary radio-frequency communications become unreliable.
Referring now to
A radio-frequency control device 101, a UAV 102, a second radio-frequency communications control device 103, a radio-frequency network 104, a cellular communications device 105, a cellular communications tower 106, a cellular communications network 107, and an end computing device equipped with a cellular communications device 108 having interconnectivity are shown. In conventional UAV operations, command and control (C2) information is sent between a controller 101 and the UAV communications device 103 via a radio-frequency channel 104. Under a plurality of circumstances, including but not limited to a failure in the radio-frequency network 101, 103, or 104, a boundary condition of the UAV 102 being exceeded, such as flying into a restricted area, an air traffic control override, or simply by the user of the UAV desiring to switch control methods, the cellular communications system 110 takes over primary control from the RF communications system 111.
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| Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| PCT/CA2018/050015 | 1/9/2018 | WO | 00 |
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 62444492 | Jan 2017 | US |
