Experiment on Mission Planning of Wide-Aperture Antenna Test Using Unmanned Aircraft System

The paper presents the novel measurement technique of fundamental parameters of wide aperture antennas with the help of unmanned aerial system (UAS) and the results of simplified experiment that allows to estimate efficiency of such technique. The experimental setup includes signal source based on UAS equipped with RF transceiver and reference antenna. The movement of the signal source relative to the antenna under study is calculated from the position of antenna image on the successive frames of video content captured by onboard camera of UAS. The video, the RF receiver and other units of the system are synchronized by the transmitter with the help of flash of light passed through the optical fibre into the camera field of view.