Performance evaluation of measurement based GPS denied 3D drone localization and tracking

This paper presents experimental results of GPS free drone location using two antenna arrays. The experimental platform contains two synchronized stationary 4-by-4 rectangular antenna arrays. The arrays receive the signal emitted from a single antenna mounted on a drone. A Multiple signal classification (MUSIC) algorithm is applied to estimate the angle of arrival (AOA) at each array. The estimated AOA from both arrays is combined by the triangulation technique. We further employed the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) to mitigate the estimated 3D location errors from the triangulation. To evaluate the performance of the AOA estimation, we conducted several measurements with different types of trajectories using a test-bed. The location estimation results of the proposed method are quantitatively compared and evaluated with the GPS trajectory of the drone. The estimation results have verified that the proposed experimental approach can localize and track the drone with reasonable accuracy.