InterDigital, Senior Principal Engineer
Presentation title: Role of cellular in safe integration of Drones into National Air-Space
This talk introduces novel 5G system frameworks to facilitate low altitude UAV operations. Specifically, we discuss cellular air-interface enhancements for providing high-reliability and low-latency aerial communications, the key element that will enable BV-LOS command & control (C2), and effective detect & avoid (DAA) solutions for drones. We introduce the notion of joint airspace & radio resource allocation, delivering guaranteed airspace and radio resource reservation end-to-end for the entire flight path. This is accomplished via development of detailed UTM-cellular network interfaces. Next, we introduce the concept of edge-UTM/DAA which leverages multi-access edge computing (MEC) framework of 5G, where UTMs reside close to the radio access network thereby enabling local situational awareness. This facilitates automated low-latency operations suitable for implementing time critical DAA solutions. We conclude this talk with a demonstration of a working edge-UTM prototype solution.
Ravikumar Pragada is a Senior Principal Engineer at InterDigital, Inc. where he is responsible for leading next generation air-interface and system technologies. He has broad expertise covering incubation, pre-standards R&D, standardization, technology, product development and prototyping. He has actively contributed to and held leadership positions in various next generation wireless system projects viz., ultra-low power communications, AI/ML applied to wireless, sub-THz systems, unmanned aerial systems, millimeter wave air-interface design and development, device-to-device communications, millimeter wave backhaul and beyond 4G architectures. He also held engineering positions in product development including lead software architect for HSPA/UMTS and LTE projects covering handset and infrastructure products. He is a prolific inventor with 100+ granted or pending patent applications. He is a recipient of numerous innovation awards including InterDigital’s Chairman’s award, President’s award, multiple CTO awards as well as Lucy Mahjobian distinguished publication award. Prior to InterDigital he was part of Tier 1 OEM team that developed RNC and NodeB infrastructure for 3GPP UMTS system. He is currently serving as vice-chair for the IEEE 1920.1: Aerial Communications and Networking Standards Working Group. He holds an M.S. in computer science and engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo.