Multiple Sensor Fusion for Autonomous Mini and Micro Aerial Vehicle Navigation

Micro aerial vehicle (MAV) describes a category of aircraft with dimensions roughly comparable to small birds. As the smallest, powered aircraft, MAVs can carry various sensors as payload to support such civil and military missions as traffic monitoring, weather observation, and enemy surveillance during military conflicts. In order to carry out more sophisticated missions and to improve the flight performance of the aircraft, a reliable navigation solution, especially of the attitude, is of significant importance. For this, an inertial measurement unit (IMU) based on micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) were tightly- coupled (usage of GPS raw data) with GPS. Subject of this paper is the influence of the distance between IMU and GPS antenna, the position of the GPS antenna relative to the IMU and the number of GPS antennas used on the navigation accuracy (position, velocity, attitude). The results presented are based on Monte Carlo simulations. They are not limited to small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV).