Abstract:

The study presents the assessment of the accuracy of the location of the radio signal source in 2D space, assuming the use of a simple radio signal power measurement system located on the UAV. The mutilateration method was used to estimate the location of this source, based on the non-linear regression function. The evaluation was performed for the AWGN channel model with various variances value of additive noise as well as for the Rice channel model with different signal fading depth (suited for conditions in which the UAV is collecting of the series of measurements). The model has been validated in the propagation channel without additive noise or fadings. It is assessed that without additional technical procedures, e.g. smoothing the values of the measurement samples (e.g. using Kalman filtration), the error in estimating the source location in a typical Rice channel may be approximately equal to 10% of the real distance to signal source.