Analysis of the Availability of Real-Time Kinematic Data for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Shipboard Landing

Abstract

This research investigates the availability of real-time kinematic (RTK) satellite navigation for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) shipboard landings The combination of UAVs and ships can enhance the efficiency of intelligence gathering and surveillance and improves the long-range strike capability of the air force However the limited shipboard landing area as well as interference due to wind disturbance and wave motion make the shipboard landing of UAVs extremely difficult In order to successfully land aircraft in such a challenging environment RTK satellite navigation which is a high-precision navigation system for UAVs is applied in this work RTK satellite navigation is a positioning enhancement technique that uses differential carrier-phase measurements Various experiments were conducted to verify RTK satellite navigation performance for shipboard landing The experimental results were using for a self-developed low-cost simulation tool Statistical analysis of RTK positioning availability was then conducted The developed simulation tool a software-in-the-loop (SIL) system for UAV shipboard landing simulates the entire landing process including the UAV flight path UAV attitude wave motion and RTK navigational results The UAV used in the SIL system is the SP X-6 aircraft which was developed by the Remotely Piloted Vehicle & Micro Satellite Research Laboratory at National Cheng Kung University for a cross-sea flight project For the wave motion simulation the ITTC two-parameter spectrum is used as the power spectrum of the sea waves to be simulated and all the harmonic waves are synthesized based on the Longuet-Higgins model in the time domain Finally the RTK positioning results are used in the landing process which has two modes namely the RTK operational mode and the RTK failure mode The actual RTK positioning results are derived for experiments under various configurations (static dynamic and limited number of common-view satellites) The availability analysis results will be useful for RTK navigation system design for UAV shipboard landings

Date of Award	2014 May 23
Original language	English
Supervisor	Shau-Shiun Jan (Supervisor)