A survey of state-of-the-art U-space research

U-space, the EU implementation of air traffic management of drones, is one of the key enablers to realizing a safe integration of crewed and uncrewed aviation in shared airspace. The development and integration of U-space and its services will support a high level of digitalization and automation of drones and has been ongoing since 2017 when its blueprint was published by SESAR. Now with the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2021/{ 664/665/666} in force, the establishment of U-space airspace in the EU is becoming a reality. This paper surveys available research and state-of-the-art on U-space. A total of 60 publications have been identified using the presented literature search method. Based on the insights gained from the literature search, eight subdomains have been defined. Each publication has been assigned to one primary subdomain and one or more secondary subdomain(s) within U-space. The subdomains are described and discussed and probable future research perspectives are extracted.