Next Generation Intelligent Low-Altitude Economy Deployments: The O-RAN Perspective

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Abdalla, Aly Sabri, Marojevic, Vuk
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Abdalla, Aly Sabri
Marojevic, Vuk
author_facet Abdalla, Aly Sabri
Marojevic, Vuk
contents Despite the growing interest in low-altitude economy (LAE) applications, including UAV-based logistics and emergency response, fundamental challenges remain in orchestrating such missions over complex, signal-constrained environments. These include the absence of real-time, resilient, and context-aware orchestration of aerial nodes with limited integration of artificial intelligence (AI) specialized for LAE missions. This paper introduces an open radio access network (O-RAN)-enabled LAE framework that leverages seamless coordination between the disaggregated RAN architecture, open interfaces, and RAN intelligent controllers (RICs) to facilitate closed-loop, AI-optimized, and mission-critical LAE operations. We evaluate the feasibility and performance of the proposed architecture via a semantic-aware rApp that acts as a terrain interpreter, offering semantic guidance to a reinforcement learning-enabled xApp, which performs real-time trajectory planning for LAE swarm nodes. We survey the capabilities of UAV testbeds that can be leveraged for LAE research, and present critical research challenges and standardization needs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_00257
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Next Generation Intelligent Low-Altitude Economy Deployments: The O-RAN Perspective
Abdalla, Aly Sabri
Marojevic, Vuk
Systems and Control
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Multiagent Systems
Networking and Internet Architecture
Despite the growing interest in low-altitude economy (LAE) applications, including UAV-based logistics and emergency response, fundamental challenges remain in orchestrating such missions over complex, signal-constrained environments. These include the absence of real-time, resilient, and context-aware orchestration of aerial nodes with limited integration of artificial intelligence (AI) specialized for LAE missions. This paper introduces an open radio access network (O-RAN)-enabled LAE framework that leverages seamless coordination between the disaggregated RAN architecture, open interfaces, and RAN intelligent controllers (RICs) to facilitate closed-loop, AI-optimized, and mission-critical LAE operations. We evaluate the feasibility and performance of the proposed architecture via a semantic-aware rApp that acts as a terrain interpreter, offering semantic guidance to a reinforcement learning-enabled xApp, which performs real-time trajectory planning for LAE swarm nodes. We survey the capabilities of UAV testbeds that can be leveraged for LAE research, and present critical research challenges and standardization needs.
title Next Generation Intelligent Low-Altitude Economy Deployments: The O-RAN Perspective
topic Systems and Control
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Multiagent Systems
Networking and Internet Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.00257