Feasibility of Using Synthetic Aperture Radar to Aid UAV Navigation

Feasibility of Using Synthetic Aperture Radar to Aid UAV Navigation

This study explores the potential of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) to aid Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) navigation when Inertial Navigation System (INS) measurements are not accurate enough to eliminate drifts from a planned trajectory. This problem can affect medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE)...

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Main Authors: Nitti, Davide O., Bovenga, Fabio, Chiaradia, Maria T., Greco, Mario, Pinelli, Gianpaolo
Format: Online
Language:English
Published: MDPI 2015
Online Access:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4570324/
id pubmed-4570324
recordtype oai_dc
spelling pubmed-45703242015-09-17 Feasibility of Using Synthetic Aperture Radar to Aid UAV Navigation Nitti, Davide O. Bovenga, Fabio Chiaradia, Maria T. Greco, Mario Pinelli, Gianpaolo Article This study explores the potential of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) to aid Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) navigation when Inertial Navigation System (INS) measurements are not accurate enough to eliminate drifts from a planned trajectory. This problem can affect medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) UAV class, which permits heavy and wide payloads (as required by SAR) and flights for thousands of kilometres accumulating large drifts. The basic idea is to infer position and attitude of an aerial platform by inspecting both amplitude and phase of SAR images acquired onboard. For the amplitude-based approach, the system navigation corrections are obtained by matching the actual coordinates of ground landmarks with those automatically extracted from the SAR image. When the use of SAR amplitude is unfeasible, the phase content can be exploited through SAR interferometry by using a reference Digital Terrain Model (DTM). A feasibility analysis was carried out to derive system requirements by exploring both radiometric and geometric parameters of the acquisition setting. We showed that MALE UAV, specific commercial navigation sensors and SAR systems, typical landmark position accuracy and classes, and available DTMs lead to estimate UAV coordinates with errors bounded within ±12 m, thus making feasible the proposed SAR-based backup system. MDPI 2015-07-28 /pmc/articles/PMC4570324/ /pubmed/26225977 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s150818334 Text en © 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
repository_type Open Access Journal
institution_category Foreign Institution
institution US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building NCBI PubMed
collection Online Access
language English
format Online
author Nitti, Davide O.
Bovenga, Fabio
Chiaradia, Maria T.
Greco, Mario
Pinelli, Gianpaolo
spellingShingle Nitti, Davide O.
Bovenga, Fabio
Chiaradia, Maria T.
Greco, Mario
Pinelli, Gianpaolo
Feasibility of Using Synthetic Aperture Radar to Aid UAV Navigation
author_facet Nitti, Davide O.
Bovenga, Fabio
Chiaradia, Maria T.
Greco, Mario
Pinelli, Gianpaolo
author_sort Nitti, Davide O.
title Feasibility of Using Synthetic Aperture Radar to Aid UAV Navigation
title_short Feasibility of Using Synthetic Aperture Radar to Aid UAV Navigation
title_full Feasibility of Using Synthetic Aperture Radar to Aid UAV Navigation
title_fullStr Feasibility of Using Synthetic Aperture Radar to Aid UAV Navigation
title_full_unstemmed Feasibility of Using Synthetic Aperture Radar to Aid UAV Navigation
title_sort feasibility of using synthetic aperture radar to aid uav navigation
description This study explores the potential of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) to aid Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) navigation when Inertial Navigation System (INS) measurements are not accurate enough to eliminate drifts from a planned trajectory. This problem can affect medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) UAV class, which permits heavy and wide payloads (as required by SAR) and flights for thousands of kilometres accumulating large drifts. The basic idea is to infer position and attitude of an aerial platform by inspecting both amplitude and phase of SAR images acquired onboard. For the amplitude-based approach, the system navigation corrections are obtained by matching the actual coordinates of ground landmarks with those automatically extracted from the SAR image. When the use of SAR amplitude is unfeasible, the phase content can be exploited through SAR interferometry by using a reference Digital Terrain Model (DTM). A feasibility analysis was carried out to derive system requirements by exploring both radiometric and geometric parameters of the acquisition setting. We showed that MALE UAV, specific commercial navigation sensors and SAR systems, typical landmark position accuracy and classes, and available DTMs lead to estimate UAV coordinates with errors bounded within ±12 m, thus making feasible the proposed SAR-based backup system.
publisher MDPI
publishDate 2015
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4570324/
_version_ 1613475953387765760

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