Robust GPS and radar sensor fusion for multiple aerial vehicles localization

This paper presents a novel localization framework for multiple AVs based on sensor fusion of global positioning system (GPS) and the identification friend-or-foe (IFF) Radar system. The IFF-Radar play two roles: firstly, it detects the angle and the range between two AVs, and thus the path between the two vehicles can be modeled as a curve. Secondly, it detects which AV helps form the above curve, and receives the corresponding GPS information from the friend vehicle. Through the cooperation of the multiple AVs, GPS can work well with fewer satellites due to the block of canyon environments. Analysis shows that two GPS satellites are sufficient to obtain the location information with the help of two or more friend vehicles. Simulations show that the proposed approach can achieve better localization by the cooperation among multiple aerial vehicles than single aerial vehicle.