Positioning and Navigation Approaches Using Packet Loss-Based Multilateration for UAVs in GPS-Denied Environments
Issaree Srisomboon, Sanghwan Lee
Abstract
Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology has shown rising outstanding performance and has become one of the essential innovations at present applications. In outdoor surveillance operations, such as geolocation and navigation in restricted areas, an unmanned aerial vehicle such as a drone is able to accomplish those missions efficiently with the assistance of a Global Positioning System (GPS). On the contrary, a drone without that being said system is particularly limited to indoor surveillance or short-range applications due to the absence of precise positioning capabilities. This research paper addresses the crucial challenge of the non-GPS drone 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 points packet transmission by employing 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. The simulation results prove that by relying solely on packet loss computation, the drone without a precise positioning system can identify its location and recover to its nearest destination position without the necessity of complex sensors.