Development Of UAV Navigation Platform Towards The Polarization Sensor

In this paper, aimed at the application of the polarization sensor in UAV navigation, a UAV navigation platform towards the polarization sensor is designed and achieved in the analysis of the basic structure and control theory of the navigation platform.The hardware of the navigation platform is constituted by the power supply module, flight control processor module, sensor module, GPS module, data-link module and interface module, in which the sensor module includes a gyroscope, an accelerometer, a pressure altitude sensor and a polarization sensor. The power supple module provides a stable power supply for the whole system. The flight control processor is responsible for overall system control management and task planning, and it generates control signal in accordance with the control command or the preset track through integrating various types of measurement information. The sensor module achieves the detection of aircraft flight status. GPS module provides location information for the system. The data-link module is used for communication between the airborne platform and ground control station. Data and instructions are transferred through interface module.The design of the navigation platform software part uses a modular design idea, which divides the entire software system into different modules, and each module can be called according to the system. Based on I2C, SPI, USART and other interfaces, navigation platform is able to read and process sensors’data, receive and extract GPS data, receive and decode radio control signal, store and extract data, receive and transmit data. At the same time, other functions are achieved with the use of timers and interrupts.In term of navigation algorithm, the direction cosine matrix method and its application in attitude algorithm are researched. And the differential equation of coordinate transformation matrix is derived through the establishment of the direction cosine matrix from navigation coordinate frame to aircraft-body coordinate frame. Taking advantage of the complementary characteristics of the sensors in the measurement frequency, the influences of motion acceleration and sensor drift on measurements are reduced effectively with the use of complementary filter in attitude algorithm. Combined classic PID control theory, the control principle of the navigation platform is studied, and the specific implementation measures of altitude control loop, height control loop and heading control loop are given. Navigation platform and polarization sensor are tested based on the system structured and the study of navigation algorithm. The results show that the navigation platform is convenient to use, and what’s more, it has a fast response and stable performance. As a result, it could be used as a test platform to develop navigation applications for polarization sensor and lays the foundation for polarization sensor to be used in the aircraft navigation in the future.