GNSS-Independent Navigation of UAV through Utilization of Sensor Fusion and Intelligence System

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have gained a lot of attention due to their applications in various sectors. Most of fully autonomous UAVs navigation system is dependent on GNSS for localization. But the security threats that emanates from GPS system; spoofing and jamming makes the reliance on GNSS problematic. In this work, we proposed a fully autonomous UAV navigation system without GNSS and wireless communication. The application area of interest in this work is military battlefield. The proposed navigation method combines information gathered by Intelligence Preparation for Battlefield (IPB) and Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance(ISR) group and onboard sensors. Then it applies AI-enabled multi sensor fusion, motion planning and decision making to accomplish the navigation successfully. The integrated way of navigation used to assess the conceptual possibility of autonomous navigation without the use of external navigation system and reliable operation of UAV at GPS and wireless signal denied environment. In addition, to ensure reliable operation of the navigation system, devices health monitoring system through the use of distributed monitoring agent and AI algorithms are proposed. The conceptual architecture is designed as six layer architecture with cross-layer interaction feature.