International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 21, 2002 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / This paper presents a Flight Safety System (FSS) for multiple, reliable Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV’s) capable of flying Over-the-Horizon (OTH) and outside test range airspace. Expanded uses beyond flight safety, such as UAV Air Traffic Control, are considered also. This system satisfies the operational requirement for a Hazard Control Communication Channel as well as providing a reverse communications channel to provide Safety Critical Information to the Range Safety Officer (RSO). Upon examining 60 communications candidates, IRIDIUM accessed through a Data Distribution Network (DDN), with ARINC being a potential service provider, is recommended.

Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication using Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) technology promises to help drastically reduce vehicle collisions. DSRC allows vehicles in a highly mobile and complex network to send and receive safety messages with more reliability and lower latency compared with other wireless technologies used for automotive communications. However, there are many factors that could cause a safety-critical automotive application to become unreliable due to communication failures. While the reliability of V2V communication has been a subject of study by several researchers, there are still open questions regarding how the placement of the DSRC devices (inside or outside the host vehicle), the vehicle’s interior elements and the differences in altitude can affect the V2V communications. This article provides experimental testing data and analyses in order to quantify the impacts of relative vehicle speeds, altitude differences between vehicles, and interior obstacles on V2V communication range and reliability for opposite traffic, in both city and highway environments. We discuss how these results can adversely affect the design parameters of safety critical applications by considering the V2V application “Safe Pass Advisory” on two-lane rural highways.