scholarly journals MULTILATERATION UNDER FLIP AMBIGUITY FOR UAV POSITIONING USING ULTRAWIDE-BAND

Author(s):  
K. Park ◽  
J. Kang ◽  
Z. Arjmandi ◽  
M. Shahbazi ◽  
G. Sohn

Abstract. Ultrawide-band (UWB) ranging technology and multilateration techniques have recently been emerging solutions for positioning unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in GNSS-denied environments. This solution offers cm-level ranging accuracy and considerable robustness to multipath receptions. UWB modules are commonly used in an anchor-based configuration; i.e., one UWB tag is mounted on the UAV, and several UWB anchors are installed on the ground. In real-world operational conditions, anchors can form a planar or a near-planar surface. This causes a geometric ambiguity, called flip ambiguity, in position estimation. Flip ambiguity can lead to considerable errors in the estimated position by multilateration. In this paper, we present a multilateration approach, which automatically resolves the flip ambiguity for UAV-positioning using UWB ranging. The proposed multilateration method first computes an algebraic solution through recursive least squares. If the initially estimated position is found to be flipped, then it is corrected by a symmetric reflection with respect to the anchor plane. Finally, the estimated position is refined by non-linear optimization. Extensive experiments in a real environment show that the proposed algorithm can effectively tackle the issue of flip ambiguity in multilateration, leading to a significant improvement in positioning accuracy.

Author(s):  
V. Soboliev ◽  
M. Herashchenko ◽  
S. Rudnichenko ◽  
S. Trofymenko ◽  
V. Ilienko

At the present stage of development of unmanned aircraft systems work continues at a rapid pace to further improve their capabilities in the direction of more effective combat and special tasks. This is especially noticeable in two key areas: increasing the range and flight duration; reducing the physical size of the unmanned aerial vehicles. The combination of increasing flight duration and decreasing design characteristics significantly affects the requirements for unmanned aircraft system communication equipment and the development of a beyond line of sight satellite communication channel, which is currently considered as the main channel for transmitting intelligence, telemetry information in real time. Under existent warfighting conditions, the development of communication lines on the principle of a beyond line of sight with the use of ground or airborne relay stations, or through the introduction of additional ground control stations is virtually unjustified, due to the high dynamics of operational conditions and time constraints for decision making. In this context, the unmanned aerial vehicles' satellite communication channels are subject to strict requirements to ensure the combat missions are carried out successfully and safely. The article examines current approaches to the implementation of satellite communication channels with unmanned aerial vehicles in the context of the requirements for both on–board equipment and directly to the development of a satellite communication channel. Recommendations are given for the basic requirements for the organization of satellite duplex communication beyond line–of–sight with unmanned aerial vehicles based on geostationary (medium-altitude) high throughput satellites in the Ka frequency range.


Electronics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (7) ◽  
pp. 1175
Author(s):  
Salvatore Ponte ◽  
Gennaro Ariante ◽  
Umberto Papa ◽  
Giuseppe Del Core

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) with on-board augmentation systems (UAS, Unmanned Aircraft System) have penetrated into civil and general-purpose applications, due to advances in battery technology, control components, avionics and rapidly falling prices. This paper describes the conceptual design and the validation campaigns performed for an embedded precision Positioning, field mapping, Obstacle Detection and Avoiding (PODA) platform, which uses commercial-off-the-shelf sensors, i.e., a 10-Degrees-of-Freedom Inertial Measurement Unit (10-DoF IMU) and a Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), managed by an Arduino Mega 2560 microcontroller with Wi-Fi capabilities. The PODA system, designed and tested for a commercial small quadcopter (Parrot Drones SAS Ar.Drone 2.0, Paris, France), estimates position, attitude and distance of the rotorcraft from an obstacle or a landing area, sending data to a PC-based ground station. The main design issues are presented, such as the necessary corrections of the IMU data (i.e., biases and measurement noise), and Kalman filtering techniques for attitude estimation, data fusion and position estimation from accelerometer data. The real-time multiple-sensor optimal state estimation algorithm, developed for the PODA platform and implemented on the Arduino, has been tested in typical aerospace application scenarios, such as General Visual Inspection (GVI), automatic landing and obstacle detection. Experimental results and simulations of various missions show the effectiveness of the approach.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 172988142093271
Author(s):  
Mingxing Chen ◽  
Zhi Xiong ◽  
Jianye Liu ◽  
Rong Wang ◽  
Jun Xiong

Aiming at the formation problem in the cooperative navigation of unmanned aerial vehicle swarm, a cooperative position error analysis method based on cooperative dilution of precision is studied in this article. During cooperative flight, the unmanned aerial vehicle swarm can use the received position and ranging information of the adjacent unmanned aerial vehicles to calculate the position, and fuse with its own sensor position information. The final positioning accuracy depends not only on the capability of the ranging sensor but also on the position accuracy and formation of the adjacent unmanned aerial vehicles. In this article, these influence factors are combined to put forward a cooperative dilution of precision calculation method suitable for unmanned aerial vehicle swarm cooperative navigation. On this basis, a cooperative integrated navigation method based on ranging information is designed. Finally, the performance of cooperative navigation of unmanned aerial vehicles in different formations is simulated and analyzed. The simulation result shows that the cooperative dilution of precision method proposed in this article can effectively analyze the influence of formation on the positioning accuracy of unmanned aerial vehicle swarm, and the final combined positioning result is consistent with the cooperative dilution of precision analysis result.


Author(s):  
A.A. Moykin ◽  
◽  
A.S. Medzhibovsky ◽  
S.A. Kriushin ◽  
M.V. Seleznev ◽  
...  

Nowadays, the creation of remotely-piloted aerial vehicles for various purposes is regarded as one of the most relevant and promising trends of aircraft development. FAU "25 State Research Institute of Chemmotology of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation" have studied the operation features of aircraft piston engines and developed technical requirements for motor oil for piston four-stroke UAV engines, as well as a new engine oil M-5z/20 AERO in cooperation with NPP KVALITET, LLC. Based on the complex of qualification tests, the stated operational properties of the experimental-industrial batch of M-5z/20 AERO oil are generally confirmed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (11) ◽  
pp. 985-995
Author(s):  
Valerii V. Semenets ◽  
V. M. Kartashov ◽  
V. I. Leonidov

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