Developing services on which the country will begin to build its nationwide drone operations, Drone Center Sweden is a unique test bed project in Västervik (on Sweden’s south-east coast) which is supported by Sweden´s innovation agency Vinnova, the Swedish Transport Administration, Västervik municipality, and is coordinated by RISE, Sweden’s state-owned research institute. RISE brings together the private and public sectors and academia to develop services, products, technologies, processes, and materials, which contribute to a sustainable future and a competitive Swedish business community.
Project PNK (Positioning, Navigation and Communications), is an initiative to test, document and evaluate the possibility and expediency of using the mobile network to position, navigate and communicate with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS), within Sweden’s existing airspace rules and regulations. Together, RISE, Telia, Ericsson, SWEPOS, Drone Center Sweden and other partners in the PNK4UTM project will deploy Altitude Angel’s GuardianUTM Enterprise platform to safely and securely enable BVLOS drone operations.
Karim Cosslett, Altitude Angel, Sales & Partnership Manager, said: “Sweden has a rich history in developing and taking-to-market world leading technology. To have GuardianUTM Enterprise chosen by one of the country’s most prestigious institutions, which is developing the next generation of delivery and urban air mobility solutions, is very exciting. All at Altitude Angel are very much looking forward to working with the teams in the PNK4UTM project and Drone Center Sweden to bring about the infrastructure to realise the almost incalculable potential of drones.”
Åke Sivertun (RISE), PNK4UTM Project Manager, added: “Altitude Angel’s GuardianUTM Enterprise platform will give us the foundations on which we can build the future of Sweden’s drone network by developing our already extensive positioning, navigation and communications infrastructure to power this emerging and exciting technology.
“Given Sweden’s diverse geography, it has over many years built a large, mature communications network. However, this network is currently not optimised to communicate with UAVs which are operating at an altitude of between 10 and 120m, so the coverage must be verified and the cells, in some cases, adjusted to achieve the desired coverage. New radio frequencies in 4-5G provide great opportunities to add services to the networks which are important for many target groups, including autonomous vehicles.”
