Performance Analysis of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) for Improved Aerial Surveillance

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been used for so many applications. One such application is patrolling and surveillance, which involves moving from one defined geographic region to the other in a search for possible security threats to the public. The search area (Surveillance zone) could be bounded or grow continuously. This fact, together with the presence of naturally rough, changing territory and the possibility of bad weather, poses a huge challenge to security personnel that otherwise use the land patrol method. Aerial platforms (UAVs) can be advantageous in patrolling and surveillance due to their ability to provide constant performance missions without getting tired and their lower vulnerability to harsh weather conditions compared to humans. A coordinated team or swamp of UAVs that can assist security personnel by autonomously performing missions such as patrolling, surveillance, detections and sending information to the Ground Control Station (GCS) possibly the police station, would be of great value. However, to date, a suitable UAV coordination for autonomous surveillance that can satisfactorily address the issues relating to security threats is lacking in Nigeria. In this study, a UAV was deployed, and patrolling missions were investigated the speed was determined as a low speed, which is 10.152𝑘𝑚/ℎ, a force of 1.4N acted on the vehicle, the tilting angles of the propellers were measured to be 15°, propeller efficiency is calculated to be 81%. The UAV was investigated to have a good performance in terms of flight, it attained a very high altitude which was good enough for video coverage but had a limitation of endurance due to battery capacity. Hence various energy management methods were studied, and the best energy management is a hybrid energy source (combination of battery, solar and PEM fuel cell) on board the vehicle. Lastly, the cellular communication between the (GCS) and UAV was considered and the Wi-Fi (communication range of up to 200m with a control radius of 37m was obtained.