4 General description

24.2573GPPProtocol aspectsRelease 17Stage 3TSUncrewed Aerial System (UAS) Application Enabler (UAE) layer

The UE can contain a UAE client (UAE-C). The UAE-C and the UAE server (UAE-S) are located in the UAE layer. The UAE layer can offer the UAE capabilities to the UAS application specific layer. The UAE layer can utilize SEAL services provided by SEAL, which may include location management, group management, configuration management, identity management, key management and network resource management (see 3GPP TS 23.434 [4]).

The UAE-C communicates with the UAE-S over the U1-AE interface (see 3GPP TS 23.255 [2]). Furthermore, the UAE-C of a UE can communicate with the UAE-C of another UE over unicast Uu interface (including LTE-Uu or NG-RAN-Uu) (see 3GPP TS 23.255 [2]). Both the UAE-C and the UAE-S can act as an HTTP client or an HTTP server (see IETF RFC 7231 [5]). The HTTP protocol interactions are described in detail in clause 6.

By means of using the U1-AE interface:

a) Communications between UAVs within a geographical area using unicast Uu can be provided as defined by clause 6.2;

b) C2 communication mode selection and switching can be provided as defined by clause 6.3;

c) UAS UE registration can be provided as defined by clause 6.4;

d) UAS UE de-registration can be provided as defined by clause 6.5; and

e) UAS UE registration update can be provided as defined by clause 6.6.