  The number of daily small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS) operations in
uncontrolled low altitude airspace is expected to reach into the millions. UAS
Traffic Management (UTM) is an emerging concept aiming at the safe and
efficient management of such very dense traffic, but few studies are addressing
the policies to accommodate such demand and the required ground infrastructure
in suburban or urban environments. Searching for the optimal air traffic
management policy is a combinatorial optimization problem with intractable
complexity when the number of sUAS and the constraints increases. As the
demands on the airspace increase and traffic patterns get complicated, it is
difficult to forecast the potential low altitude airspace hotspots and the
corresponding ground resource requirements. This work presents a Multi-agent
Air Traffic and Resource Usage Simulation (MATRUS) framework that aims for fast
evaluation of different air traffic management policies and the relationship
between policy, environment and resulting traffic patterns. It can also be used
as a tool to decide the resource distribution and launch site location in the
planning of a next-generation smart city. As a case study, detailed comparisons
are provided for the sUAS flight time, conflict ratio, cellular communication
resource usage, for a managed (centrally coordinated) and unmanaged (free
flight) traffic scenario.
