Nonlinear Extended Kalman Filter for Attitude Estimation of the Fixed-Wing UAV

Abstract

Flying vehicle’s navigation, direction, and control in real-time results in the design of a strap-down inertial navigation system (INS). The strategy results in low accuracy, performance with correctness. Aiming at the attitude estimation problem, many data fusion or filtering methods had been applied, which fail in many cases, which attains the nonlinear measurement model, process dynamics, and high navigation range. The main problem in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and flying vehicles is the determination of attitude angles. A novel attitude estimation algorithm is proposed in this study for the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). This research article designs two filtering algorithms for fixed-wing UAVs which are nonlinear for the attitude estimation. The filters are based on Kalman filters. The unscented Kalman filter (UKF) and cubature Kalman filter (CKF) were designed with different parameterizations of attitude, i.e., Euler angle (EA) and INS/unit quaternion (UQ) simultaneously. These filters, EA-UKF and INS-CKF, use the nonlinear process and measurement model. The computational results show that among both filters, the CKF attains a high accuracy, robustness, and estimation for the attitude estimation of the fixed-wing UAV.