Effects of Frequency Spectrum Allocation on Successful Integration of Unmanned Systems into Disaster Response Operations
Lee P. Battle, Shahram Sarkani, Thomas A. Mazzuchi · Infotech@Aerospace 2011 · 2011
Wireless radio and unmanned systems are two technologies that can be applied towards supporting the operations of public safety agencies. The broad deployment of public safety wireless radio systems has provided individual agencies with a communications capability able to support the needs of daily operations; the method of deployment has contributed to the same wireless technology failing to support the full range of unique communication needs required during disaster response operations in the multi-agency spectrum environment. To resolve these problems, efforts are currently underway towards coordinating further public safety wireless deployment by way of introducing broad-agency communications interoperability standards. Unmanned systems differ from public safety radio in relative level of current deployment but are similar in their necessity to operate within the multi-agency spectrum environment when supporting disaster response operations. As efforts continue towards further deployment of unmanned systems to different individual public safety agencies, an understanding of what will be required to operate in the multi-agency environment and the resultant effect on system performance will facilitate more successful integration of the unmanned technology into disaster response operations. Towards that end, a model for the system wireless link and communication performance measures important to public safety use of unmanned systems are presented. Using empirical data of wireless signal loss in a practical public-safety operating environment as input to the model, analysis was performed for different regions of the frequency spectrum. Direct comparison of model outputs indicates towards degradation in system performance when higher wireless frequencies are used for constrained systems operating within the examined environment.