A UWB positioning network enabling unmanned aircraft systems auto land

Although Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) have become popular, the auto land of a fixed wing UAS has still remained as a significant challenge. This paper presents a UAS auto landing system based on a Ultra Wide Band (UWB) positioning network. The geometry of the UWB anchors in the network is optimized to provide precise positioning accuracy during the course of UAS landing. The notable performance characteristics of the system is that the positioning of the UAS becomes more accurate as it approaches to the runway more closely. At the point of a landing flare, the landing system is expected to provide vertical positioning accuracy better than 20 cm in 95 percent of time. The paper discusses the methodology of designing the proposed UWB positioning network architecture and the positioning performance analysis through simulations.