Flight Sensor Data and Beamforming based Integrated UAV Tracking with Channel Estimation using Gaussian Process Regression

With explosively increasing demands for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) applications, reliable link acquisition for serving UAVs is required. Considering the dynamic characteristics of UAV, it is hugely challenging to persist a reliable link without beam misalignment. In this paper, we propose a flight sensor data and beamforming signal based integrated UAV tracking scheme to deal with this problem. The proposed scheme provides a compatible integrated system considering the practical specification of the flight sensor data and the beamforming pilot signal. The UAV position tracking is comprised of two steps: 1) UAV position prediction by the flight sensor data and 2) position update with the beamforming signal using Gaussian process regression (GPR) method, which is a nonparametric machine learning. The flight sensor data can assist ground station (GS) or UAV nodes in designing the precoding and the receive beamforming matrix with drastically reduced overheads. The beamforming signal can accomplish high beamforming gain to be maintained even when the flight sensor data is absent. Therefore, the proposed scheme can support the moving target continuously by utilizing these two signals. The simulation results are provided to confirm that the proposed scheme outperforms other conventional beam tracking schemes. We also derive 3-dimensional (3D) beamforming gain and spectral efficiency (SE) from the mean absolute error (MAE) of the angular value estimation, which can be used as beamforming performance metrics of the data transmission link in advance.

Robust and Low Complexity Beam Tracking with Monopulse Signal for UAV Communications

UAV communications based on an antenna array entail a beam tracking technology for reliable link acquisition. Unlike conventional cellular communication, beam tracking in UAV communication addresses new issues such as mobility and abrupt channel disconnection from UAVs perturbation. To deal with these issues, we propose a beam tracking scheme based on extended Kalman filter (EKF) using a monopulse signal, which can provide (1) higher robustness by offering a reliable link in the estimated spatial direction and (2) lower complexity compared with the existing conventional beam tracking schemes. We point out the limitations of using a beamformed signal as a measurement model for a Kalman filter (KF) based scheme and instead utilize the monopulse signal as a more plausible model. For the performance evaluation, we derive the upper bound of the mean square error for spatial angle estimation of UAV and confirm that the proposed scheme is stable with a certain bounded error. We also show from various simulations that the proposed scheme can efficiently track UAV and detect beam disconnection every time frame using a beamformed signal.