The recent release of ADS-L 4 SRD860 Issue 2 by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency to standardise the message set across Electronic Conspicuity (EC) marks a significant moment in the evolution of EC across Europe. PilotAware wholeheartedly welcomes and supports this development.
ADS-L provides the industry with something it has urgently needed for years: a harmonised, proportionate and frequency-sensible EC protocol that enables interoperability without forcing legacy licensed aviation infrastructure into roles it can no longer reliably support.
To support ADS-L this is what we are doing
By 3 December, every PilotAware ATOM ground station both in the UK and mainland Europe had been upgraded to:
This achievement demonstrates:
With the ATOM upgrades complete, ADS-L transmissions are already being:
In effect, the PilotAware network has become the first large scale operational ADS-L surveillance layer in UK and Europe, delivering airspace visibility immediately with this immediate Over the Air (OTA) software release.
ADS-L O-Band signalling has now been integrated into the development firmware for:
Initial flight testing is underway using selected units in controlled environments.
Early results demonstrate that:
Once validated, ADS-L will be delivered to all eligible users via an OTA software update, using the PilotAware iGRID architecture.
This means thousands of GA, microlight, glider, and UAV operators will become ADS-L compatible without needing to purchase a new device. Nice
PilotAware supports the ADS-L standard and recognises the value of a unified European protocol.
ADS-L solves an important problem: it aligns Europe onto a common message format on modern SRD-860 frequencies. This is a prerequisite for interoperability in U Space.
But ADS-L alone does not provide:
These will remain the strengths of the PilotAware ecosystem.
You will see all EC types with the lowst latency and highest resolution posiible.
PilotAware - Flarm - Fanet+ - ASB- Mode-S whether they are using ADS-L or not. Magic!
The integration strategy is in line with our current capacity and future vision: we do the integration to make it easy for you
ADS-L provides the standard; the PilotAware MATRIX provides the capability.
Together they deliver something uniquely powerful for European aviation.
PilotAware will continue to fully support EASA’s work on ADS-L.
We both share common objectives:
Objectives that will also:
· provide a reduction in the increasingly unnecessary load on the already congested 1090 MHz band, helping to ensure that ADS-B continues to function reliably in the busy European airspace as traffic volumes grow.
· preserve the 1090 MHz capacity for commercial aviation, where high-power, high-integrity ADS-B and Modes-C/S remains essential to the safety net for large transport aircraft, TCAS, and en-route surveillance systems in IMC.
· provide GA and unmanned aviation with a proportionate alternative, using modern SRD-860 frequencies with the standardised ADS-L protocol to support situational awareness in lower-risk environments without consuming 1090 MHz bandwidth.
Our rapid deployment again demonstrates that:
PilotAware will continue to work with EASA, national authorities, industry partners and competing manufacturers to ensure the safe adoption of ADS-L across Europe.
Over the coming months PilotAware will:
Our aim, since inception, remains consistent and simple:
To help provide the most complete, most connected, and most practical situational awareness available to European airspace users of all types.
This is a moment of significant progress, not just for PilotAware, but for European aviation as a whole.