Reduction of the Influence of Interfering Signals on the Longitudinal Control of UAVs with Fixed Wing

Abstract

The presented study offers a comprehensive insight in design and application of the Kalman filters for improvement of control efficiency of small unmanned aerial vehicles with fixed wing. The presented control scheme of the UAV includes its model, a servo drive model, and an optimal proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller for the selected flight speed. Subsequently, process noise and measurement noise components were introduced into the whole constructed UAV model. The process noise was formed by disturbances caused by horizontal and vertical airflow in the atmosphere. The measurement noise contained deterministic and stochastic errors of the inertial measurement unit (IMU) UAV sensors and engine noise. The obtained results showed that the designed optimal Kalman filter was able to eliminate the influence of interfering signals from the control process and increased the phase safety, controllability, and stability of UAV control as a lean design can be applied in real-time control systems like Pixhawk PX4.