Beyond Visual Line Of Sight (BVLOS) Drone Communications Relay Technical Roadmap for COVID19 Multi-Function Operations

A set of use cases identified for supporting the response to COVID-19 is addressable by BVLOS drone operations, including:

1\. Delivery of medical supplies and testing equipment remotely to patients.

2\. Collection and transfer of medical samples.

BVLOS operations requires communications for both Command and Control (C2) of the airborne platform and payload communications. This connectivity problem is challenging: drones are mobile; must operate autonomously from ground level up to 400' with buildings and terrain blocking and disrupting signals; in rural and urban areas; and require payload data rates in the Mbps range. Available communications networks have patchy coverage, available radio frequencies are constrained in bandwidth, power limits or both.

This investigation addresses a novel architecture to mitigate these challenges and so provide comms modules to enable suitably capable drones to deliver COVID-19 benefits. The work incorporates a design study using well-defined mission use cases. The output is a specification and roadmap for the required systems, ready for a subsequent design and build of BVLOS comms modules.