Angle-of-arrival Target Tracking Using a Mobile UAV In External Signal-denied Environment

This paper focuses on the angle-of-arrival (AOA) target tracking problem using a mobile unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) equipped with an angle-of-arrival (AOA) sensor to observe targets in an external-denied (no global positioning system, inertial navigation system aid) environment. The mathematical formulations are based on two known anchors. The extended Kalman filter (EKF) is modified to calculate the UAV's and target's absolute coordinates. To improve the tracking accuracy, a gradient-based UAV path optimization algorithm using simultaneous perturbation stochastic approximation (SPSA) is developed. The geometry of anchors and UAV impacts the estimation accuracy, especially when the selected anchors are close to the target. The simulations have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.