Multisource Fusion UAV Cluster Cooperative Positioning Using Information Geometry

Due to the functional limitations of a single UAV, UAV clusters have become an important part of smart cities, and the relative positioning between UAVs is the core difficulty in UAV cluster applications. Existing UAVs can be equipped with satellite navigation, radio navigation, and other positioning equipment, but in complex environments, such as urban canyons, various navigation sources cannot achieve full positioning information due to occlusion, interference, and other factors, and existing positioning fusion methods cannot meet the requirements of these environments. Therefore, demand exists for the real-time positioning of UAV clusters. Aiming to solve the above problems, this paper proposes multisource fusion UAV cluster cooperative positioning using information geometry (UCP-IG), which converts various types of navigation source information into information geometric probability models and reduces the impact of accidental errors, and proposes the Kullback–Leibler divergence minimization (KLM) fusion method to achieve rapid fusion on geometric manifolds and creatively solve the problem of difficult fusion caused by different positioning information formats and parameters. The method proposed in this paper is compared with the main synergistic methods, such as LS and neural networks, in an ideal scenario, a mutation error scenario, and a random motion scenario. The simulation results show that by using UAV cluster movement, the method proposed in this paper can effectively suppress mutation errors and achieve fast positioning.