With the FIFA World Cup tournament and most of the big celebrations of America’s 250th birthday now in the rear-view mirror, law enforcement agencies, local government officials and infrastructure owners have gotten a wake-up call as to the importance of being able to identify and track drones in their airspace.
Most counter-UAS experts agree on the need to institute a layered approach to airspace awareness, employing a wide variety of different technologies — such as radar, radio frequency (RF) analyzers, and optical cameras. Each of these systems has its advantages and drawbacks, which can include limited range, lack of low-altitude coverage and high cost.
A partnership between AT&T and Ericsson recently held a demonstration at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, one of the 11 sites across the U.S. to have hosted World Cup matches, to demonstrate its drone-tracking solution. The companies say the system being proved out eventually could fill in some of the gaps present in other technologies.
Relying on 5G signals from existing cellular towers, the system was able to detect a UAV, posing as a hostile drone flying into a simulated no-fly zone. Artificial intelligence software was used to identify the drone as a potential threat. A drone piloted by an Ericsson employee was then dispatched to encounter the intruder vehicle.
“If you think about 5G network today, it provides connectivity for devices that are actually connected to the network. Using the same existing infrastructure and providing new software that can not only connect to devices, but sense passive objects that are not connected to devices gives us a capability to have situational awareness,” Akhil Gokul, vice president and head of technology at Ericsson Americas, said in an interview.
The Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) technology has several advantages over the use of radar in detecting drones, Gokul said. Unlike traditional radar systems, which scan objects at higher elevations but are less effective in finding objects in the low altitude airspace. The ISAC system, however, can discern objects in the lower levels of the airspace typically occupied by commercial and recreational drones.
In addition, because it relies on radio signals from an existing cellular network, ISAC does not require the installation of expensive new radar equipment, he said.
System’s Capabilities Demonstrated in Dallas
In the recent demonstration, Ericsson used signals from three cellular sites arrayed in a multi-static configuration. “And in that secured airspace, we were able to detect drones and essentially show how the existing infrastructure, with new capabilities, is able to provide things like drone detection, tracking of the drones, and also using AI to classify the drones,” Gokul said.
Ericsson and AT&T see a number of real-world applications for the technology. “We look at scenarios both in the public safety and defense sectors. That’s where we are seeing majority of the initial use cases and the demand.”
On the commercial side, Gokul said the “low-hanging fruit” for the technology’s application is in providing drone detection, tracking and classification solutions and perimeter protection for high-value buildings and properties.
“Think energy sites, nuclear plants, data centers and the like. And it also can be used for public safety, especially because the technology is built on existing 5G networks, and these networks are ubiquitously deployed nationwide.”
The kind of sensing information that the ISAC collects can also be invaluable in promoting the growth of the low-altitude economy by helping to facilitate commercial drone delivery by companies such as Amazon and Walmart, he said.
Not Waiting for 6G Implementation
Wireless network companies are expected to initiate the global commercial implementation of 6G technology around 2029-2030 timeframe, but Gokul said the partners are not waiting for that seminal event to implement some aspects of 6G into their suite of products.
“Our intention was not to wait for the standardization for 6G,” he said. “We are bringing some of those capabilities in a much earlier timeframe by leveraging what’s available today in 5G.”
He said the partners expect to deploy aspects of the technology in waves, beginning with the introduction of the system’s prototype last February, progressing rolling out new iterations of the technology over the next several years, leading up to the end of the decade when 6G becomes fully implemented.
In order to conduct the recent demonstration of the technology in Dallas, Ericsson and AT&T secured the rights to use a portion of the airspace near the stadium on a day and time when no FIFA events were being held.
“It does show the effectiveness of how to provide a corridor … around critical infrastructure like stadiums,” Gokul said. “It brought to attention the prominence of issues with drones and the need for drone tracking.”
He said that for potential customers, adopting the ISAC drone-tracking and -identification technology makes sense from an economic point of view.
“You’re using the existing cell sites, the towers the infrastructure that are already deployed, so you get coverage as opposed to having a new radar deployed or a new sensing system deployed,” he said.
In addition, the use of a system that relies on existing cellular signals makes a great deal of sense technologically, especially in the lower altitude airspace where other UAS-detection technologies are less effective.
“This is the low-altitude scenario where typically radars have some blind spots, especially the bigger radars” he said. At the lower altitudes, the ISAC system can be used to complement the use of other drone-detection technologies.
And, because the system relies on receiving signals from three cellular sources, there is not a single point of failure.
“We sense the object is by using RF echoes,” Gokul said. “You have one transmitter and two receivers, and we rotate it so you get a good three-dimensional view of the of the digital airspace or of the ground.”
AI Classification Completes the 5G Drone Detection Picture
The system’s AI component provides the final piece of the technological puzzle.
“Not only are we looking at the reflections of the RF, but we are doing the signal processing and AI inferencing and classification. We are marrying the best of what we can do with 5G technology and AI as we bring that sensing capability to our customers.”
More information is available from Ericsson’s website.
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Jim Magill is a Houston-based writer with almost a quarter-century of experience covering technical and economic developments in the oil and gas industry. After retiring in December 2019 as a senior editor with S&P Global Platts, Jim began writing about emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robots and drones, and the ways in which they’re contributing to our society. In addition to DroneLife, Jim is a contributor to Forbes.com and his work has appeared in the Houston Chronicle, U.S. News & World Report, and Unmanned Systems, a publication of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International
