Principle Engineers

@Rahul Ramkumar @Egor Gorelyy @Yuchen Lin

Forced to Review

EFS Leads

Dragged Along

Uplifted

Objective

To design and fabricate an antenna system which receives drone GPS coordinates from the ground stiation and uses them to allow the two directional--antennas to track the drone. The two antenna towers are T_Telem and T_VRX (video reception).

Due date

Key outcomes

Implement the algorithm to obtain GPS data to pitch and yaw the antenna using the Nucleo board, servo motors, and a potentiometer.

Antennae should be able to rotate 360 degrees yaw multiple times (flight path and available cable length will need to be considered)

Pitch adjustment should be able to go from ~20 to 90 degrees

Both antenna towers must

• be collapsible and able to be placed in one carrying hard case that can be transported by one person

• be able to be setup within 5 minutes in the cold

• have clearly labeled ports and no jumper cables

If properly setup, antenna should be able to run for 40 minutes unconnected to the GSPC

Status

Background Research

Each tower will have a: Nucleo, IMU, GPS, antenna all mounted on the panning head. This pan head should be able to track a drone flying ~ 70km/h at a 50m radius away while maintaining accuracy within 15 degrees of the centre of a drone at a max range of 7 km away.

Mounted on the tracking antenna (but perhaps not on the moving head) of the antenna may be signal boosters, signal relays, excess wires, wire splitters, power, etc.

Notch filters to improve signal quality.

Have the antennae accurately position themself according to the position of the drone within a 30~60-degree effective angle (angle needs to be clarified further).

Antenna towers need to be ~25 feet apart to avoid interference.

Future Expansion:

Not in scope:

Nucleo

One on each tower

Microcontroller for the whole system

2

BMX160 IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit)

One on each antenna head

Tracks the direction and movement of the antenna head and is used in adjusting it so it lines up with the drone.

2

https://www.mouser.ca/datasheet/2/783/BST_BMX160_DS000-1509610.pdf

20 x 12.5mm

Neo m8 GPS

One on each tower

Used to get position of each tower and to compare with that of the drone to aim at it.

Connects to Nucleo via cable.

2

USB Tether

Tethered tower operation

XBEES 2.4ghz

Untethered operation

RMRC 1.3 GHZ video receiver

AKK 5.8 GHZ Video Transmitter

TBS Tracer Nano 2.4 GHZ Rx

Enclosure

PPM relay

Servos

4

X-AIR 1.3

Separate from the other two antennas

Mounted on panning head

Directional patch antenna

135 g

Mounting: Standard 1/4-20 flush thread

Connector: SMA male

1

152mm x 152mm x 30mm

SINGULARITY 868

Together with X-AIR 900

Does not need to be mounted on the panning head but has to be outside box

Omnidirectional antenna

Connector: SMA

Weight unspecified

1

65mm x xxmm + 90mm cable

X-AIR 900

Together with Singulairty 868

Nees to be mounted on the panning head

Directional patch antenna

324 g

Connector: SMA male

Mounting: Standard 1/4-20 flush thread

1

222mm x 222mm x 45mm

Coding/Simulation

Algorithm exists already in Matlab but it is undecided yet if it is going to be used

Implement the GPS position → yaw and pitch algorithm in C++

Not started

Driver Testing for imu, GPS, and motor

Not started

Unit testing for drone-tracking code

Not started

Tune PID for motors (if needed)

Not started