UAV Flight Plan Authentication via Air Traffic Management
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Solution Overview
Problem
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are limited to segregated air spaces due to the lack of laws regulating their use in non-segregated areas, rendering automatic operation paradigms like waypoint navigation ineffective, and existing collision prevention methods are not scalable for high traffic areas, with no mechanism to authenticate or protect flight plans from manipulation.
Innovation Solution
A hierarchical service where the UAV operator sends a flight plan to an air traffic management body for verification and correction, which signs and encrypts the plan using its private key, and the UAV device decrypts it using its private key and the management body's public key, ensuring only the intended UAV can use the plan, with recorded data accessible only to the management body for accountability.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If UAVs operate in non-segregated air spaces without centralized management, then operational flexibility and autonomy are improved, but collision risk and safety deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a centralized air traffic management body as an intermediary between UAV operators and the air space. This mediator receives flight plans, verifies compatibility with other missions, corrects potential collisions, and issues authorized flight plans. This resolves the contradiction by enabling flexible autonomous operation while maintaining safety through centralized coordination.
2Device complexity
If flight plans are transmitted without encryption and authentication, then system complexity is reduced, but security and integrity deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary actions by encrypting the flight plan with the UAV's public key before transmission and signing it with the management body's private key. The UAV device then verifies the signature using the management body's public key and decrypts the flight plan using its own private key. These preliminary security measures ensure flight plan integrity and authenticity while maintaining manageable system complexity through standardized cryptographic operations.
Data Source
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AI summary
A method is described for allowing missions of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), in particular in non-segregated air space, which comprises the steps of: prearranging a flight plan by an operator of an unmanned aerial vehicle, wherein the following steps are carried out: encrypting said flight plan, by said management and control body, with a private key of said management and control body, so as to obtain an encrypted flight plan; encoding said encrypted flight plan with a public key of the unmanned aerial vehicle for which said flight plan is intended, so as to obtain an encrypted and encoded flight plan.