Design and evaluation of antenna pointing control system onboard fixed-wing UAV to realize video transmission relay station

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are used for many services in various fields. We propose a video transmission relay system in which a fixed-wing UAV is used as a relay station. In order to establish the video transmission link, it is necessary to accurately point the antenna onboard a fixed-wing UAV to both the target ground station and the UAV for photography while making the UAV turn over the designated area. In this study, we propose a new antenna pointing control system, which uses a 2-axis gimbal to greatly reduce the attitude motion of the UAV, and describe evaluation results of the performance of the antenna pointing control system.