Distributed Array Planning Method with Layered Constraint in Multi-UAV Formation with Bearing-only Detection

Multi-UAV formations for bearing-only detection are increasingly important in modern military confrontations, and the geometric array of the formation is one of the decisive factors affecting the detection accuracy of the system. This paper proposed the distributed stochastic subgradient projection algorithm (DSSPA) with layered constraint to solve this problem. Firstly, the system model for cooperative positioning of UAV formation using bearing-only detection method was constructed. And based on the constraints of safe flight altitude and fixed baseline, the UAV formation is layered. Then, the proposed DSSPA combines the idea of stochastic subgradient descent and the projection method, making it more suitable for processing the objective function including non-smooth and convex optimization parts. Simultaneously, by applying the projection operation on each feasible solution, it can ensure that the constraints of the problem are met when updating parameters. Finally, simulation experiment was set up to verify the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed distributed method in array planning of UAV formations with bearing-only detection.