Automatic Landing of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles via Wireless Positioning System with Pseudo-Conical Scanning

In this work, a wireless UAV unmanned landing system is considered, using the principles of pseudo conical scanning with a phased antenna array (PAA). The basic requirements for the characteristics and parameters of the system as a whole and of its components are defined. Special attention is paid to the primary sensor of the system—PAA with electronic scanning. A variant with a minimum number of four states on the radiation pattern of a low-budget patch PAA was studied. A linear regression of the difference characteristics of the measured radiation beams is proposed, which allows the practical application of the recommended landing algorithm with low computational complexity. Systematic and random positioning errors, both by measurement and by Monte Carlo simulation, were studied. Obtained statistical results prove the algorithm convergence and acceptable accuracy for the system implementation. They are applied if necessary to adjust the Kalman filter parameters. The proposed wireless system can be used for unmanned landing, tracking, and navigating the UAV in flight, or wireless navigation of other mobile objects.