Unmanned aerial vehicle localisation using RSSI-based trilateration

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) utilise the Global Positioning System (GPS) for navigation. Nevertheless, it is susceptible to obstruction and jamming threats. This paper investigates LoRa (Long Range) technology to create a redundant UAV localisation system, addressing the challenges of GPS dependency and vulnerability to signal disruptions. The system operates at 915 MHz, utilising Arduino and LoRa transceivers for Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) -based trilateration. LoRa provides an operational radius of up to 20 km in line of sight, providing GPS-free UAV navigation. Real-time monitoring and analyses have been performed via MATLAB and the IoT-based cloud platform, ThingSpeak. The experiment demonstrated that UAV localisation can be performed in line-of-sight (LoS) and Non-line-of-sight (NLoS) environments. The findings suggest that the path loss exponents of 3.2 and 3.4 were suitable for the area in which the experiment was conducted. LoRa’s exceptional capabilities such as its low power, long range and geolocation, help address the urgent demand for reliability in military, civilian surveillance and disaster response contexts. Future research is necessary to develop a complete UAV localisation system that utilises trilateration and LoRa technology. Further work can include testing with different antennas, testing in different environments and producing a real-time monitoring application.