Could drones call each other using 5G?

Qualcomm this week called on federal regulators to use a 5G technology to allow drones to communicate with each other. Qualcomm calls the technology aircraft-to-everything (A2X) and argues it could make drone flights safer and more efficient.

Qualcomm’s proposal comes at an important time for the drone industry. New federal rules could pave the way for retail giants like Amazon and Walmart to manage swarms of delivery drones.

Such delivery drone fleets could also create significant opportunities for the wireless companies that would provide connections to those flying gadgets.

“Pitney Bowes estimates that about 59 million packages are delivered every day in the US,” Qualcomm wrote in a new post to its website. “If 50% of those deliveries were done by drones, that would require nearly 30 million drone flights each day.”

Indeed, Amazon said recently that its goal is to deliver 500 million packages annually using drones by the end of the decade.

Sidelinking

In its new proposal, Qualcomm explained that drones need to be able to communicate with a wide variety of objects, including other drones, in order to avoid collisions and other problems.

To make that communication happen, Qualcomm is suggesting that regulators use a variation of sidelink, a technology developed by the 3GPP standards organization for direct, walkie talkie-type device-to-device communications. 3GPP is the primary standards association behind technologies including 3G, 4G and 5G.

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