Daedalus
Dynamic altitude-enhanced airspace layering for U-space
The problem
Today's drones operate in the same low-level airspace with no common understanding of altitude. Barometric pressure references vary across regions and weather conditions, while GNSS-based geometric altitude introduces its own errors and conversion challenges. Two aircraft at the same reported altitude can be metres apart vertically — a critical safety gap in dense U-space environments.
As drone traffic grows, the lack of a unified, trusted altitude reference limits how tightly we can separate aircraft vertically, wastes usable airspace, and prevents the full utilisation of the vertical dimension in U-space.
What are we doing
DAEDALUS delivers a TRL7 SESAR Solution that makes the vertical dimension of VLL airspace a programmable, interoperable, and integrity-aware resource.
The project integrates a Common Altitude Reference System (CARS) for unified altimetry, a Dynamic Airspace Layering (DAL) engine that computes safe vertical separation in real time, an altitude-enhanced flight authorisation service, and GNSS integrity monitoring — all working together to enable safe, efficient multi-drone operations.
