Positioning and Navigation Approaches Using Packet Loss-Based Multilateration for UAVs in GPS-Denied Environments

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology has demonstrated outstanding performance and has become an essential innovation in current applications. In outdoor surveillance operations, such as geolocation and navigation in restricted areas, an unmanned aerial vehicle, such as a drone, can accomplish missions efficiently with the assistance of a Global Positioning System (GPS). In contrast, drones without such a system are particularly limited to indoor surveillance or short-range applications owing to the absence of precise positioning capabilities. This study addresses the crucial challenge of non-GPS drones in outdoor surveillance scenarios and proposes a packet loss-based positioning approach, wherein a drone estimates its current position by utilizing wireless packet loss from reference point packet transmission using a multilateration technique. Moreover, we introduce three heuristic lightweight navigation algorithms, leveraging packet loss-based positioning and enabling a drone to navigate toward its intended destinations. Through simulations, we observed a significant average reduction of 55.78% in navigation accuracy errors during operation, proving that a drone without a precise positioning system can identify its location and recover to its nearest destination position by relying solely on packet loss computation without the need for complex sensors.