An Online SBAS Service to Improve Drone Navigation Performance in High-Elevation Masked Areas

Owing to the high demand for drone operation in high-elevation masked areas, it is necessary to develop a more effective method of transmitting and applying Satellite-Based Augmentation System (SBAS) messages for drones. This study proposes an onboard module including correction conversion, integrity information calculation, and fast initialization requests, which can enable the application of an online SBAS to drone operation. The proposed system not only improves the position accuracy with timely and proper protection levels in an open sky, but also reduces the initialization time from 70–100 s to 1 s, enabling a drone of short endurance to perform its mission successfully. In SBAS signal-denied cases, the position accuracy was improved by 40% and the uncorrected 13.4 m vertical error was reduced to 5.6 m by applying an SBAS message delivered online. The protection levels calculated with the accurate position regardless of the current location could denote the thrust level and availability of the navigation solution. The proposed system can practically solve the drawbacks of the current SBAS, considering the characteristics of the low-cost receivers on the market. Our proposed system is expected to be a useful and practical solution to integrate drones into the airspace in the near future.