Towards SORA-Compliant BVLOS Communication

With the advances in drone technology, the demand for long-distance drone flights Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS), is increasing. A prerequisite to BVLOS flights is reliable communication between Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and Ground Control Station (GCS). Moreover, BVLOS operations can require multiple pilots during the flight, for example at takeoff and landing, who can take manual control if necessary. This necessitates a means to handover control between multiple pilots during the flight. This paper will explore options for line-of-sight radio links, for reducing the required bandwidth by optimizing the communication between the UAV and GCS, and for supporting multiple pilots. A MAVLink library to optimize the communication between the UAV and GCS has been designed and implemented. The library successfully reduced the communication from 11440 bytes/s to 951 bytes/s. A component for pilot handover has similarly been designed and successfully tested in real-world conditions. The LOS radios selected have been used successfully together with the MAVLink library in real-world SORA-approved BVLOS operations at a maximum radio LOS distance of 1375 m.