Determining the Location of the UAV When Flying in a Group

Abstract

This paper created a flight trajectory model of five uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the geocentric coordinate system, provided the UAVs fly in the specified formation. Based on this model, equations for determining the position of a selected member of a group of UAVs were created, provided that the group communicates with each other in its telecommunications network. The simulation confirmed that if we know the exact coordinates of the four member UAVs of the group and their distances from the leader of the group, then the mean value of the error in determining its position in flight is equal to 0.044 m, and the variance is equal to 2.9 m2. We consider these errors to be methodological errors of the proposed method. Next, we checked how the error of determining the position of the group leader depends on the distance measurement errors between the individual UAVs and the group leader. The simulation confirmed that if errors in measuring the distance between individual UAVs and the group leader are from 0.01 m to 12.0 m, the mean values of group commander position determination errors range from 0.11 m to 34.6 m. The simulation result showed that to accurately determine the group commander’s position, the distance measurement errors between individual UAVs and the group commander must be less than 1.9 m. The research results showed that the telemetry method can be used to determine the position of individual members of the UAV group. The advantage of this method is that it does not require the reception of signals from satellite navigation systems, which can be interfered with under certain conditions. The disadvantage of the method is the need to synchronize the time bases of individual UAVs that communicate in the telecommunications network.

Keywords

• unmanned aerial vehicles
• flight trajectory model
• telecommunications network
• positioning accuracy