Estimation of minimum alerting boundaries in winds for small unmanned aircraft systems

To achieve a level of safety equivalent to manned aircraft in the national airspace system, the pilot-in-command of small unmanned aircraft systems should be able to maintain situational awareness and make necessary maneuvers to avoid potential conflicts with nearby air traffic during mid-air encounters. However, due to ever-changing flight environments, the pilot-in-command often mis-estimates conflict risks and cannot engage the appropriate maneuvers to prevent mid-air traffic from violating the safety boundaries of small unmanned aircraft systems. To fix this problem, a Monte Carlo simulation-based method is therefore introduced and designed in this paper to quantitatively determine the alerting threshold boundaries in various wind conditions for detect-and-avoid systems to help the pilot-in-command identify hazards and trigger avoidance maneuvers before a safety boundary violation occurs.