ISBN 9783843942690

978-3-8439-4269-0, Reihe Elektrotechnik

Tatiana Pavlenko
Design and Optimization of Sparse Antenna Arrays for 3D Wireless Positioning Systems

182 Seiten, Dissertation Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (2019), Softcover, A5

Zusammenfassung / Abstract

Enabling accurate 3D positioning via optimized sparse antenna arrays for a secondary radar-based localization system is the main goal of this work.

The sparse planar and dome arrays were designed to achieve accurate localization in two relevant applications. The first is the indoor hall localization of a mobile robot, which is essential for service and logistic tasks. The second scenario is concerned with safe operation of UAVs during flight and landing in GNSS-denied environments. According to the scenario's needs, cost-effective planar and dome antenna array designs combining a low number of patch antennas and a wide unambiguous scanning range are targeted.

In order to satisfy such challenging requirements, the positions of array elements are optimized on a planar and hemispherical surface using a multi-objective particle swarm algorithm. Additionally, a concept for a cost-effective improvement of the dome array performance for low-multipath scenarios is presented.

Particular emphasis in this work is placed on the manufacturing, calibration and performance evaluation of the array designs. The application of a mobile robot in an indoor hall environment is verified using an optimized sparse 8-element planar array. Drone localization in the upper hemisphere is demonstrated with the designed sparse 16-element dome array and its enhanced version combining 28 patch antennas. In addition, these dome arrays become the basis for a novel concept of an ad-hoc UAV landing via dropped beacons. Its experimental verification is also presented.

Besides the array realization for the targeted scenarios, the analyses and considerations as well as the optimization and calibration methods presented in this work can be used as general guidelines to sparse antenna array design for 3D positioning systems, regardless of the application scenario.