Date of Award

1-1-2013

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Organizational Unit

Daniel Felix Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science

First Advisor

Kimon P. Valavanis, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Matthew J. Rutherford

Third Advisor

Richard Garcia

Fourth Advisor

Robert Whitman

Fifth Advisor

Daniel Pack

Sixth Advisor

Nikolaos Galatos

Keywords

Avoidance, Collision, Doppler, FSKCW, Frequency Shift Keyed Continuous Wave, RADAR, Radio Detection and Ranging, Sensors

Abstract

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) have become increasingly prevalent and will represent an increasing percentage of all aviation. These unmanned aircraft are available in a wide range of sizes and capabilities and can be used for a multitude of civilian and military applications. However, as the number of UAS increases so does the risk of mid-air collisions involving unmanned aircraft. This dissertation aims present one possible solution for addressing the mid-air collision problem in addition to increasing the levels of autonomy of UAS beyond waypoint navigation to include preemptive sensor-based collision avoidance. The presented research goes beyond the current state of the art by demonstrating the feasibility and providing an example of a scalable, self-contained, RADAR-based, collision avoidance system. The technology described herein can be made suitable for use on a miniature (Maximum Takeoff Weight < 10kg) UAS platform. This is of paramount importance as the miniature UAS field has the lowest barriers to entry (acquisition and operating costs) and consequently represents the most rapidly increasing class of UAS.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Allistair Moses

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

139 p.

Discipline

Robotics, Engineering, Aerospace engineering

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