An autonomous communications relay in GPS-denied environments via antenna diversity

Abstract

In this paper we present a motion planning scheme for enabling a quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to serve as an autonomous communications relay in indoor or GPS-denied environments. Using antenna selection diversity, the quadrotor is able to optimize its location in the communication chain so as to maximize the link throughput. Measurements of the communications field drive a gradient descent algorithm that moves the quadrotor to an optimal location while avoiding obstacles, all without the use of positioning data. Numerical simulations and preliminary experimental results verify the validity of the proposed extremum-seeking approach.