Cellular-enabled Aerial Vehicles: Exploration of the Landscape of the North American Ecosystem

Drone whitepaper published by the GSMA North America

The GSMA North America Vertical Application Taskforce (NAVA) published recently a new whitepaper about cellular-enabled Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UASs) reflecting the regional ecosystem’s perspective. The intended audience for this paper includes stakeholders in cellular-connected and networked UAS ecosystems.

Belonging to the UAV family, drones have been available commercially already for years. They are useful in many activities from hobby-based photographing to the most critical public safety applications, and they are typically based on short-range wireless connectivity such as Wi-Fi. Along the increasing demand to serve evolving use cases, the cellular systems are becoming increasingly relevant option for managing the command-and-control link of UAVs.

UAS in turn refers to the combination of the vehicle or aircraft such as drone, the controller, and the links that connect them.

This whitepaper presents the principles and advances of cellular UAS in North America, and outlines how the mobile networks can support the market today. Some of the commercial UAS categories are the delivery and collection of information, delivery of goods, and in the future, also the delivery of people. The paper cites ongoing activities and open needs to advance the scale of the cellular connected UAS ecosystem for the purpose of supporting commercialization of the core technologies needed to accomplish these tasks.