In some scenarios involving first responder’s operations, drones are required to have a communication continuity that needs to involve Satellite Communication services giving operators the ability to send and receive data beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS), enabling operations half a world away. The publication of the Manifesto for the development of D-Flight’s U-Space services paved the way for the first U-Space services of Electronic Remote Identification Networking and Traffic Information (NRI). The actual U-space services lack of the full traceability of positioning data from its origin to final recording and storage.

Nevertheless, there is no mechanism put in place yet, to avoid any counterfeit of data from its origins to its permanent storage. For ensuring the full traceability chain with a high level of data protection against malicious attempts of data retrieval, altered records, meaconing, or spoofing attacks, it is important to guarantee the traceability of data from its origin, by implementing secure communication channels and reliable store data without the possibility of altering their content in the future. This last point is very important for many U-space services proposed by standardization bodies as Legal Recording, Digital Logbook, Tracking, Accident reporting/Investigation as well as for the new generation of proposed U-space services.

In our vision these services can be enabled by a rugged UTM Box The UTM Box is an EGNSS/IoT transponder mounted on UASs as an add-on (EFB - Electronic Flight Bag) on. It is the fundamental key enabler for EUSATfinder solution allowing to connect with the USSP. The UTM box will be designed having in mind robustness, reliability, and anti-tampering mechanisms, considering the successful experience of the previous model Pollicino® with basic tracking functionalities. The UTM Box envisioned for EUSATfinder will be addressed for UAS needs, with the same electronics, but different HMI.     

The Innovative features of the new UTM Box can be summarized as follow:

• EGNSS OSNMA authentication (data secure from the origin)
• IMU Integration (Deep Kalman Filtering Algorithms for OSNMA / propagated solution coherence)
• UAS payload data integration to enable application specific data traceability
• Cyphering mechanism for data authenticated tracking data transmission
• Direct Remote Identification (DRI) and Network Remote identification (NRI) - EU regulation 2021/664 for General Aviation situational awareness and warnings
• GNSS Raw data transmission to EUSATfinder platform (to enable Machine Learning anti-spoofing algorithms).
• Implementation of GNSS Spoofing Detection (GSD) function intended to guarantee the authenticity of data generated and location-related internally to the UAV (e.g. by the UTM Box), providing indications whether the estimated position is genuine or altered by a spoofing attack. In sysnthesis, the GSD function aims to discriminate between genuine (authentic) and altered (spoofed) signals to increase the protection provided by the Galileo OSNMA. The function, based on AI techniques, has been trained and validated to recognize the majority of possible spoofing attacks that can be carried out on a GNSS Receiver. In particular, the GSD function is able to provide information on:
• the type of spoofing attack (e.g. meaconing, synchronized, advanced and SCER attacks)
• the spoofed GNSS Constellations, frequency bands and satellites