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Remote ID Explained

Since the operation of drones can often pose risks to people’s safety and security, new EU regulation 2019/947 requires drone operators to affix their UAS Operator ID (issued by the National authority) to the drone. By doing this, drone operators are accountable for damages they cause if their drone is physically found.

However, affixing the label with Operator ID doesn’t solve privacy & security issues of people on the ground – enforcement authorities will not be able to read it remotely on airborne drones because of their small size. For this reason, EU regulation 2019/945 enforces that all drones above 250 grams flying below 120 meters in the Open or Specific category must be equipped with Remote ID systems that allow wireless access to the UAS Operator ID. Currently, this requirement is applicable from 1st July 2022 and can be satisfied either with Direct Remote ID (DRI) or Network Remote ID (NRI). The reason for the two different solutions is to answer different needs (see explanation below).

UAS Operator ID (EU region only)

While most features and information on our platform are applicable to both US and EU regions, we want to draw your attention to a specific functionality known as the UAS Operator ID. This feature is exclusively relevant to our EU customers, as it complies with regulations specific to the European Union If you are located within the EU, we invite you to continue reading to gain a better understanding of the UAS Operator ID and its significance for you. The UAS operator ID is issued by the National authorities in each particular EU member state and is composed of two parts. The first is a sequence of 16 alphanumeric characters (known as a public part), the second contains randomly generated secure characters (known as a private part). The public part starts with three characters that define where the operator is registered (e.g. CZE for Czechia) and ends up with one checksum character. Authorities who have access to the database of UAS Operator IDs can check if the public part is valid by accessing the private part and calculating the checksum.

The main purpose of the UAS Operator ID is to upload it to the DRI system. However, only the public part is stored in the drone and is broadcasted. The private part is not stored and is only used for DRI system validation. You shouldn’t tell the private part to anyone as they may misuse your identity to commit crimes.

The example UAS Operator ID is “FIN87astrdge12k8” as public part and “xyz” as the private one. If the UAS Operator ID is not configured in the drone, it must broadcast the “NULL” string.

DRI fundamentals

The simpler approach that protects general public privacy and security is DRI. Its main advantage is it doesn’t need to establish any connection with the counterparty because the data are simply broadcasted to everyone directly from the drone (similar to the idea of ADS-B in manned aviation).

The EU 2019/945 requires that DRI data needs to be able to be received by commonly available smartphones. Therefore, only Wi-Fi or Bluetooth are left as technology options and only one type is required onboard the drone.

The important fact is that pilot’s privacy is also maintained because the drone doesn’t broadcast any sensitive personal data. Only the UAS Operator ID, drone’s and pilot’s location are accessible by the public. However, authorities can associate the UAS Operator ID with the personal details of the operator to verify his eligibility. The DRI range is somewhere between hundreds of meters to few kilometres, so it shouldn’t be easy to harvest and misuse the sensitive flight data of commercial operations.

The practical implementation of DRI on existing drones is possible in two manners. First is firmware update from drone manufacturers when technically feasible. If this support from drone manufacturers is not possible, DRI add-on solutions such as Dronetag Mini could be used to retrofit the drones. New drones introduced on the EU market after 1st January 2023 must already have a class identification label (C marking) and must be equipped with DRI systems.

NRI Fundamentals

Contrary to the DRI, NRI is considered a technically more complicated approach. Its main purpose is to establish a reliable and secure connection between drones and operators in the upcoming U-space airspaces. It is fundamental to advanced operations such as BVLOS flights, drone deliveries, and a combination of manned and unmanned traffic in the same airspace.

All drones above 250g operating in U-space airspace will be required to connect to U-space Service Provider which will assure the operator’s safety in accordance with his flight plan. To make it possible, all drone operations in the U-space airspace shall be subject to at least four mandatory U-space services where NRI is one of them. To learn more about particular requirements, check out the EU 2021/664.

DRI and NRI standardization

The DRI standardization process in the EU is held by the ASD-STAN organization as requested by European Commission to CEN. The current phase of the standardization process is a draft of prEN 4709-002 standard that specifies the transport protocols and encoding of the DRI messages.

The EU’s prEN 4709-002 specification is vice-versa compliant with the US’s F3411 managed by ASTM. However, the prEN 4709-002 defines optional and recommended fields that brings some additional benefits in the EU environment. There are ongoing discussions in ISO organization to harmonize DRI globally. For more information about the standardization process, a study of ASD-STAN’s Remote ID whitepaper is recommended.

DRI Implementation

The prEN 4709-002 standard defines three mandatory and one optional communication protocols.

  • Bluetooth 4 Legacy (optional)
  • Bluetooth 5 Long Range (mandatory)
  • Wi-Fi Beacon (mandatory)
  • Wi-Fi NAN (mandatory)

Technologies could be combined together, but broadcasting DRI with only one of the mandatories is sufficient. Generally speaking, Wi-Fi solutions have a greater range due to the higher transmission power compared to the Bluetooth ones (100mW vs 10mW). The possible range for the Wi-Fi is few kilometres whereas Bluetooth is somewhere around hundreds of meters. Our device Dronetag Mini uses Bluetooth 5 with complementary Bluetooth 4 and we measured the 1.5km range in unobstructed outdoor conditions.

DRI Support on Smartphone Devices

For information about supported devices, please visit the OpenDroneID receiver application repository.