Honeywell tests prototype antenna for beyond-line-of-sight control

At Budkovice Airport in Czechia, a drone crossed into a situation that demanded a quick decision: another aircraft entered its planned route. Operators received a conflict alert, approved a new flight path and watched it upload and execute while the drone remained connected. Honeywell says its new antenna handled the flight by switching between satellite and terrestrial links.

The lightweight prototype was developed at Honeywell Aerospace’s European R&D center in Brno under the European Space Agency’s Iris Global program. Tested with Viasat’s satellite network, it was integrated with Honeywell’s VersaWave satcom system, allowing the aircraft to move between the two communication paths without losing command authority. The goal is beyond visual line of sight, or BVLOS—drone flights conducted beyond the pilot’s direct view.

The demonstration also put the antenna inside a broader traffic-management system. Frequentis supplied its Uncrewed Traffic Management suite for operator registration, flight authorizations and geo-awareness data. A Honeywell ground station combined telemetry from the drone with data from a crewed aircraft acting as an intruder, then helped the operator choose a safer route in real time.

And concretely? The technology could support infrastructure inspections, logistics deliveries and emergency-response missions in which a drone must travel beyond its operator’s sightline. A second communications route reduces the risk that one broken link ends the connection, while the traffic-management tools provide a way to react when crewed aircraft or other drones share the airspace.

The result is promising but not yet a mass-market deployment. Czech industrial partners contributed to prototype production, and Brno University of Technology supported radio-frequency validation. Honeywell is now preparing the antenna for industrial-scale manufacturing and evaluating Czech suppliers for its wider supply chain. The live flights demonstrate the system’s operation in real conditions; they do not establish that commercial production or broad deployment has begun.