Airborne Wireless Communication Modeling and Analysis with MATLAB

Over the past decade, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) for military, commercial, and private applications. Critical to maintaining control and a use for these systems is the development of wireless networking systems [1]. Computer simulation has increasingly become a key player in airborne networking developments though the accuracy and credibility of network simulations has become a topic of increasing scrutiny [2-5]. Much of the inaccuracies seen in simulation are due to inaccurate modeling of the physical layer of the communication system. This research develops a physical layer model that combines antenna modeling using computational electromagnetics and the two-ray propagation model to predict the received signal strength. The antenna is modeled with triangular patches and analyzed by extending the antenna modeling algorithm by Sergey Makarov, which employs Rao-Wilton-Glisson basis functions. The two-ray model consists of a line-of-sight ray and a reflected ray that is modeled as a lossless ground reflection. Comparison with a UAV data collection shows that the developed physical layer model improves over a simpler model that was only dependent on distance. The resulting two-ray model provides a more accurate networking model framework for future wireless network simulations

Design and Implementation of a Drone-based Forest Fire Monitoring System Including an Exclusive Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulator

The purpose of this study is to design a fire detection drone system with a unique hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation architecture, mainly focusing on the search and localization algorithms and simulating thermal cameras to test computer vision-based detection algorithms. The autopilot hardware has been designed exclusively for this research work. The basic flight algorithm has been implemented in the autopilot firmware. To communicate and configure the autopilot, a ground control station (GCS) is developed. The GCS exchanges data with autopilot hardware using a serial port for both telemetry and HIL data links. A game engine (Unity3D) is used for implementing the simulator’s 3D graphics. To solve the rigid-body equations, the Unity3D built-in Nvidia PhysX system is utilized. The simulator exchanges data with the GCS using a UDP port. The GCS acts as a bridge between autopilot and simulator. To achieve real-time simulation performance, in most of the simulation systems and the GCS, multitasking is implemented. Furthermore, a simulated thermal camera with a raw image provider (similar to the actual hardware output) and a fire-making system in a forest-like environment has been developed to set fire to the simulated forest either at a specific location or randomly. The system consistency has been tested by performing some simulation tests and furthermore by testing the system in a real flying platform and testing the drone outdoor. Finally, the outcome of the system exhibited a good agreement with the autopilot as well as the guidance and navigation system in terms of the fire detection and positioning algorithms