Re:Qualcomm Report on LTE for Drones
by monkmartinez on Thursday May 04, 2017 @12:39PM
(#14266296)
> Another limitation of Amateur bands is that they can't be used for commercial purposes, so licensed commercial drone operators must be using commercial bands where cryptography is permitted.
I don't think so. I think we can agree that many, many commercial operators use DJI. There are also lots of amateurs using DJI. Both use the same firmware. There is no option for me to encrypt or unencrypt my Phantom which I could easily use commercially if I had my FAA Part 107.
I see. So they're operating in the ISM portion of 2.4 and 5GHz. In that case they can encrypt. So the original question seems a good one; why haven't they yet?
My understanding is that there is an exemption in amateur radio for model aircraft control signals that allows encryption [1].
[1] https://www.govregs.com/regulations/title47_chapterI_part97_...
> The FCC doesn't allow encrypted traffic on amateur bands
Would traffic that is not encrypted but is instead authenticated (with a MAC tag or AEAD'd) be allowed? What are the exact FCC rules and laws at work?
What are commercial operators doing? Another limitation of Amateur bands is that they can't be used for commercial purposes, so licensed commercial drone operators must be using commercial bands where cryptography is permitted. Don't know myself; haven't looked into it.