Integration of Onboard Detect-and-Avoid With UAS Traffic Management Services: Information Requirements and Operational Concepts

Abstract

Uncrewed aircraft systems operating at scale in low altitude airspace require reliable means to prevent mid-air conflicts while ensuring predictable interactions with networked traffic management services. Existing detect-and-avoid capabilities and UAS Traffic Management frameworks have often been designed in partial isolation, producing gaps in information flows, inconsistent assumptions about surveillance performance, and heterogeneous responsibilities for separation assurance. These gaps become critical in dense and mixed-equipage environments where onboard automation, ground-based services, and human operators must coordinate under variable communication quality. This paper examines the integration of onboard detect-and-avoid systems with UAS Traffic Management services from the perspective of information requirements and operational concepts. The discussion characterizes how trajectory intent, surveillance data, conformance monitoring outputs, and resolution advisories may be exchanged and interpreted to support consistent conflict assessment across vehicles and services. A generic concept of operations is developed for routine, degraded, and contingency states, including the delineation of functions that remain safety-critical onboard versus those that can be delegated to network services. The paper further identifies latency, integrity, continuity, and update-rate requirements for selected information elements, considering both conservative and performance-based allocations. The analysis outlines how differing roles of strategic and tactical services can be coordinated without imposing prescriptive architectures. By formulating these requirements in a technology-neutral manner, the analysis seeks to support interoperable implementations, incremental deployment, and scalable safety assurance for beyond visual line-of-sight operations in controlled and uncontrolled airspace.