BLOCKCHAIN-BASED TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT FOR ADVANCED AIR MOBILITY¶
Abstract¶
The large public interest in Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) will soon lead to congested skies overhead cities, analogously to what happened with other transportation means, including commercial aviation. In the latter case, the combination of large distances and demanded number of flights is such that a system with centralized control, with most of the traffic control decisions made by human operators, is safe. However, for AAM, it is expected a much higher demand for flights, because it will be used for people’s daily commutes. Thus, higher automation levels will become a requirement for coordinating this traffic, because of its higher complexity, which might not be effectively managed by humans. The establishment of fixed air routes can abate complexity, however at the cost of limiting traffic capacity and decreasing flight efficiency. Another alternative is the use of a powerful central system based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and / or other advanced algorithms, which would allow flexible trajectories and higher efficiency. However, such system would require concentrated investment, could contain Single-Points-of-Failure (SPoFs), would be a highly sought target of malicious attacks, and would be subject to periods of unavailability. This work proposes a new technology that solves the problem of managing the high complexity of the AAM traffic with a secure distributed approach, without the need for a proprietary centralized automation system. This technology enables distributed airspace allocation management and conflict resolution by means of trusted shared data structures and associated smart contracts running on a blockchain ecosystem. This way, it greatly reduces the risk of system outages due to SPoFs, by allowing peer-to-peer conflict resolution, and being more resilient to failures in the ground communication infrastructure. Furthermore, it provides priority-based balancing mechanisms that help to regulate fairness among participants in the utilization of the airspace.
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Citing¶
@inproceedings{SIT132,
author = {ÍTALO ROMANI DE OLIVEIRA; THIAGO MATSUMOTO; EUCLIDES CARLOS PINTO NETO},
title = {BLOCKCHAIN-BASED TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT FOR ADVANCED AIR MOBILITY},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2022 Air Transportation Symposium},
series = {SITRAER 2022},
year = {2022},
pages = {90-100},
publisher = {SBTA - Brazilian Air Transportation Research Society},
address = {São José dos Campos, Brazil,}
}
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