A Cost-Effective Tethered-UAV-Based Coherent Near-Field Antenna Measurement System

Mauermayer, Raimund A. M.; Kornprobst, Jonas

doi:10.1109/ojap.2022.3198269

Cited by 12 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…Transportation Control and Navigation Meteorology [144][145][146][147][148][149][150][151][152][153][154] Wind Energy Generation [155][156][157][158][159][160][161][162][163][164][165][166][167] Telecommunications [168][169][170][171][172][173][174][175][176][177][178] Power Module Design [8,[179][180][181][182][183][184][185][186] Image Processing [187][188][189][190][191][192] Other…”

Section: Scope Referencesunclassified

Tethered Unmanned Aerial Vehicles—A Systematic Review

et al. 2023

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In recent years, there has been a remarkable surge in the development and research of tethered aerial systems, thus reflecting a growing interest in their diverse applications. Long-term missions involving aerial vehicles present significant challenges due to the limitations of current battery solutions. Tethered vehicles can circumvent such restrictions by receiving their power from an element on the ground such as a ground station or a mobile terrestrial platform. Tethered Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can also be applied to load transportation achieved by a single or multiple UAVs. This paper presents a comprehensive systematic literature review, with a special focus on solutions published in the last five years (2017–2022). It emphasizes the key characteristics that are capable of grouping publications by application scope, propulsion method, energy transfer solution, perception sensors, and control techniques adopted. The search was performed in six different databases, thereby resulting in 1172 unique publications, from which 182 were considered for inclusion in the data extraction phase of this review. Among the various aircraft types, multirotors emerged as the most widely used category. We also identified significant variations in the application scope of tethered UAVs, thus leading to tailored approaches for each use case, such as the fixed-wing model being predominant in the wind generation application and the lighter-than-air aircraft in the meteorology field. Notably, the classical Proportional–Integral–Derivative (PID) control scheme emerged as the predominant control methodology across the surveyed publications. Regarding energy transfer techniques, most publications did not explicitly describe their approach. However, among those that did, high-voltage DC energy transfer emerged as the preferred solution. In summary, this systematic literature review provides valuable insights into the current state of tethered aerial systems, thereby showcasing their potential as a robust and sustainable alternative to address the challenges associated with long-duration aerial missions and load transportation.

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Section: Scope Referencesunclassified

Tethered Unmanned Aerial Vehicles—A Systematic Review

et al. 2023

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“…Fortunately, the availability of laser interferometric techniques makes it possible to determine the actual reached positions and estimate the amount of positioning errors. A similar issue occurs when considering in situ characterizations using unmanned aerial vehicles [ 28 , 29 ], due to uncertainties in the inertial navigation system and the weather conditions affecting the flight trajectory [ 30 ]. In such a case, the sampling locations can be determined by means of the GPS.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Efficient Procedure to Compensate for the Errors Due to the Probe Mispositioning in a Cylindrical Near-Field Facility

Bevilacqua,

D’Agostino,

Ferrara

et al. 2024

Sensors

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This paper deals with the compensation of the probe mispositioning errors occurring in a cylindrical near-field (NF) facility due to the imprecise control of the linear and azimuthal positioners allowing the cylindrical scanning and/or to their limited resolution and to defects in the rails guiding the linear motion. As a result, 3-D errors in the positioning of the probe at any sampling point, as prescribed by the adopted non-redundant representation, affect the accuracy of the NF measurements. An efficient procedure is here proposed to properly compensate for these errors. It involves two steps. The former allows one to correct the mispositioning errors due to the deviation of each actual sampling point from the nominal measurement cylinder. The latter makes use of an iterative technique to restore the NF samples at any sampling point fixed by the used non-redundant representation from the ones obtained at the previous step and affected by 2-D mispositioning errors. Once these steps have been fruitfully applied, the so-compensated NF samples are effectively interpolated through a 2-D optimal sampling interpolation (OSI) formula to accurately reconstruct the input data required to perform the traditional cylindrical near-to-far-field transformation. The OSI representation is here developed by considering an elongated antenna under test as enclosed either in a prolate spheroid or in a cylinder terminated by two half spheres (rounded cylinder) in order to make the representation effectively non-redundant. Numerical test results, which thoroughly prove the efficacy of the devised procedure in correcting even severe 3-D mispositioning errors, are reported.

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“…The AUT and the additional antenna have to be connected to the same source/receiver. • Direct amplitude and phase measurements, also referred to as vector measurements [16]- [18]. Advantages: very accurate.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For this purpose, equivalent currentbased techniques have been considered for measurements processing. For example, the post-processing conducted in [16]- [18] is based on the fast irregular antenna field transformation algorithm (FIAFTA) [19]. A sources reconstruction method is considered in [9]- [12] (without imposing Love's condition of internal zero field, [20]) and in [13]- [15] (using Love's condition, [21]) for antenna diagnostics and NF-FF transformation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving the Performance of the Phaseless Sources Reconstruction Method for Antenna Diagnostics and Characterization

López,

Fernández,

Martínez

et al. 2024

IEEE Open J. Antennas Propag.

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Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV)-based near field (NF) antenna measurement techniques have experienced significant development in recent years thanks to advantages like the capability of insitu antenna testing under operational conditions. Different approaches have been proposed to tackle the associated challenges: tethered UAVs, capable of direct acquisition of complex NF measurements; indirect acquisition of the phase of the NF using an additional antenna; and iterative retrieval of the phase from the measurement of the NF amplitude at two different surfaces. While the latter is the simplest method in terms of hardware complexity, it is affected by the limitations of iterative phase retrieval methods, like stagnation due to the local minima of the cost function. This contribution explores the possibility of improving the convergence of these iterative phase retrieval methods by reducing the number of unknowns involved in the minimization problem. For this goal, the use of meshless basis functions to characterize the Antenna Under Test (AUT) is proposed. In particular, Fourier expansion and wavelets will be analyzed. An offset reflector antenna, measured at a spherical range in anechoic chamber as well as with a UAV-based antenna measurement system, will be considered for validation purposes.INDEX TERMS Antenna measurement, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, antenna diagnostics, near field to far field (NF-FF), amplitude-only measurements, near field (NF) measurements.

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A Cost-Effective Tethered-UAV-Based Coherent Near-Field Antenna Measurement System

Cited by 12 publications

References 59 publications

Tethered Unmanned Aerial Vehicles—A Systematic Review

Tethered Unmanned Aerial Vehicles—A Systematic Review

An Efficient Procedure to Compensate for the Errors Due to the Probe Mispositioning in a Cylindrical Near-Field Facility

Improving the Performance of the Phaseless Sources Reconstruction Method for Antenna Diagnostics and Characterization

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