The instability measurements for the unmanned aerial platform as a radar carrier

The paper presents the testbed for the UAS instability measurements. The testbed consists of the aerial vehicle of the miniUAV class. The airplane is equipped with the sensor suite built upon several sensing devices: gyroscopes, accelerometers, magnetometers, GPS receiver and pressure sensors. The data from the sensors is combined in the on-board sensor fusion processor and then transmitted to the ground control station. The aerial vehicle that was acting as a carrier platform is a regular UAV being an equipment of one of the European armies. The testing results show the flying platform instabilities that can be expected during the synthetic aperture radar mission onboard the miniUAV airplane. Several measurements have been taken and the instability characteristics are presented and discussed. The aim of such measurements is to find out the starting point for design of the stabilized platform to be built onboard the UAV. The platform requirements drawn from the presented measurements are taken into account in the review of the possible stabilization solutions. The stabilized platforms were discussed with the respect of the SAR requirements.