Abstract
Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) have been the primary
positioning solution for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) due to their
worldwide coverage, high precision, and lightweight receivers. However,
GNSS is prone to electromagnetic interference and malicious assaults,
including jamming or spoofing because of its low signal-to-noise ratio
(SNR). Using redundant navigation systems is essential to ensure the
continuity and protection of UAV operations. In recent years, the phased
array radio system (PARS) has established itself as a local navigation
solution. PARS is robust towards malicious assaults because of a much
higher SNR than GNSS regarding directed and encrypted transmission. An
essential factor of PARS is that the orientation of the radio antenna at
a ground station needs to be precisely determined to obtain the correct
positioning of UAVs. This paper presents a method for extending a
previously proposed calibration algorithm to estimate the ground antenna
orientation with an inertial navigation system (INS) aided by redundant
positioning sensors (GNSS, PARS, or barometer) using a multiplicative
extended Kalman filter (MEKF) so that the calibration can be activated
during flights whenever GNSS is available. In other words, the proposed
navigation system is essentially an aided-INS that switches between two
modes depending on the availability of GNSS: calibration and GNSS aiding
mode when GNSS is available (Mode 1) and PARS and barometer aiding mode
when GNSS is unavailable (Mode 2). Considering that the navigation
system needs to include the effect of Earth’s curvature for a
long-distance flight, PARS horizontal measurement and the barometer
measurement were treated independently, and the navigation equations
were propagated in Earth Centred Earth Fixed (ECEF) frame. The
independent treatment of barometer measurement, and the propagation in
ECEF frame were also beneficial when using multiple ground antennas to
have a common reference point and reference frame. The proposed method
was validated using data (Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), GNSS, PARS,
Pixhawk autopilot (including barometer) measurements) collected during a
field test. In the validation, GNSS was made available at the middle of
the flight and the calibration mode was activated for 200s. The proposed
navigation system successfully estimated the precise orientation of
multiple ground antennas and the navigation solutions were verified
using GNSS and Pixhawk autopilot solutions as ground truth.