A Reliable Multi-Sensor Navigation System for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Realized through Integration of SINS with GPS, CNS and Doppler Radar

Contemporary importance of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) both for military and civilian applications has prompted vigorous research related with guidance, navigation and control of these vehicles. The potential civilian uses for small low-cost UAVs are various like reconnaissance, surveillance, rescue and search, remote sensing, traffic monitoring, destruction appraisal of natural disasters, etc. One of the most crucial parts of UAVs missions is accurate navigation of the vehicle, i.e. the real time determination of its position, velocity and attitude. Generally highly accurate Strap down Inertial Navigation Systems (SINS) are too heavy to be flown on UAVs. Moreover highly accurate SINS are also highly expensive. Therefore the low-cost and low weight MEMS based SINS with a compromised precision are the viable option for navigation of UAVs. The errors in position, velocity, and attitude solutions provided by the MEMS based SINS grow unboundedly with the passage of time. To contain these growing errors, integrated navigation is the resolution. Complementary characteristics SINS and external non-inertial navigation aids like Global Positioning System (GPS), Celestial Navigation System (CNS) and Doppler radar make the integrated navigation system an appealing and cost effective solution. The non-inertial sensors providing navigation fixes must have low weight and volume to be suitable for UAV application. In this research work GPS, CNS and Doppler radar are used as external navigation aids for SINS. The navigation solutions of all contributing systems are fused using Federated Kalman Filter (FKF). Three local filters are employed for SINS/GPS, SINS/CNS and SINS/Doppler integration and subsequently information from all three local filters is fused to acquire a global solution. Moreover adaptive and fault tolerant filtering scheme has also been implemented in each local filter to isolate or accommodate any undesirable error or noise. Simulation for the presented architecture has validated the effectiveness of the scheme, by showing a substantial precision improvement in the solutions of position, velocity and attitude.