Design, manufacture and performance analysis of an automatic antenna tracker for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)

Gesang Nugroho, Dicky Dectaviansyah

Abstract

In conducting a disaster monitoring mission, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has to travel a long distance to cover the region that is hited by a disaster. In the monitoring mission, Air Data and Attitude Heading Reference System (ADAHRS) data are very important to always be displayed on the ground control station (GCS). Unfortunately, the area of monitoring mission is very wide, whereas the usage of an omnidirectional antenna in the disaster monitoring mission is limited to the UAV maximum range. Therefore, a high gain directional antenna is needed. However, the directional antenna has a disadvantage of always being directed to the target. To solve this problem, antenna tracker is made to track the UAV continuously so that the directional antenna can always be directed to the flying UAV. An antenna tracker using a 32-bit microcontroller and GPS with two degrees-of-freedom was developed. It is able to move 360 degrees on azimuth axis (yaw) and 90 degrees on elevation axis (pitch). Meanwhile, the directional antenna is three elements yagi type with a radiation capability of 6 dBi. By using the antenna tracker, larger UAV range was obtained and the connection between the UAV and the GCS could always be maintained with a minimum fluctuation of RSSI signal, compared to those without using antenna tracker.




Keywords


UAV— antenna tracker; disaster monitoring; ground control station; UAV.

Full Text:

PDF


References


P. J. Bevelacqua, “Antenna Arrays: Performance Limits and Geometry Optimization,” 2008. online

“Antenna Theory.” [Online]. Available: http://www.antenna-theory.com/. online

D. F. M. Diaz, M. E. R. Montilla, and S. Suddart, “Active tracking position antenna base: A low cost approximation with servo gimbals,” IX Lat. Am. Robot. Symp. IEEE Colomb. Conf. Autom. Control, 2011. crossref

M. Jeon and D. Kwon, “An optimal antenna motion generation using shortest path planning,” Adv. Sp. Res., vol. 59, no. 6, pp. 1435–1449, 2017. crossref

A. A. Mulla and P. N. Vasambekar, “Overview on the development and applications of antenna control systems,” Annu. Rev. Control, vol. 41, pp. 47–57, 2016. crossref

Y. Wang, M. Soltani, and D. M. A. Hussain, “An Attitude Heading and Reference System for Marine Satellite Tracking Antenna,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 64, no. 4, pp. 3095 – 3104, 2017. crossref

M. N. Soltani, R. I. Zamanabadi, and R. Wisniewski, “Reliable Control of Ship-Mounted Satellite Tracking Antenna,” IEEE Trans. Control Syst. Technol., vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 221 – 228, 2011. crossref

Y. Yalcin and S. Kultulan, “A Rooftop Antenna Tracking System: Design, Simulation, and Implementation,” IEEE Antennas Propag. Mag., vol. 51, no. 2, 2009. crossref

R. V. Gatti and R. Rossi, “A Dual-Polarization Slotted Waveguide Array Antenna With Polarization-Tracking Capability and Reduced Sidelobe Level,” Publ. IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 64, no. 4, 2016. crossref

H. A. Taam et al., “Design development and experimental validation of an EBG matrix antenna for tracking application,” Int. J. Microw. Wirel. Technol., vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 231–239, 2017. crossref

“RF Design.” [Online]. Available: http://rfdesign.com.au/. online

D. Stojcsics and L. Somlyai, “Improvement methods of short range and low bandwidth communication for small range UAVs,” IEEE 8th Int. Symp. Intell. Syst. Informatics, 2010. crossref


Article Metrics

Metrics Loading ...

Metrics powered by PLOS ALM

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.




Copyright (c) 2018 Journal of Mechatronics, Electrical Power, and Vehicular Technology

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

 

Cited-By

1. The Recent Advancement in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Tracking Antenna: A Review
Anabi Hilary Kelechi, Mohammed H. Alsharif, Damilare Abdulbasit Oluwole, Philip Achimugu, Osichinaka Ubadike, Jamel Nebhen, Atayero Aaron-Anthony, Peerapong Uthansakul
Sensors  vol: 21  issue: 16  first page: 5662  year: 2021  
doi: 10.3390/s21165662