Efficient and dependable real-time communications in UAV systems

By Bert Farabaugh, Real-Time Innovations

An increasingly wide range of unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) are posing unique design and development requirements particularly regarding the data link. Many defense application developers have turned to the open data distribution service (DDS) standard to provide the necessary messaging framework.

One of the most challenging tasks in UAV system development is the design of a messaging framework that will support the complex data link performance trade offs, and which can additionally provide an application integration capability between the Ground Station and the UAV.  Developers invest heavily in the data link as a defining element of their competitive value in their UAV system, because it has direct impact on the range, flight time and sensor feedback capabilities of the UAV.

As Gary Viviani, vice president of Software Engineering at Insitu (developers of the ScanEagle UAV) said:  “Historically, we put a great deal of time and expertise in the communication systems of our platform. Despite that, transferring data was the source of many of our problems and most of our consternation.”  This article shows how a COTS-based design approach can provide an efficient & dependable real-time communications environment for the UAV systems of tomorrow...