Investigation of Using Sky Openness Ratio as Predictor for Navigation Performance in Urban-like Environment to Support PBN in UTM

One of the causes of positioning inaccuracies in the Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) is navigation error. In urban environment operations, multipaths could be the dominant contributor to navigation errors. This paper presents a study on how the operation environment affects the lateral (horizontal) navigation performance when a self-built UAS is going near different types of urban obstructions in real flight tests. Selected test sites are representative of urban environments, including open carparks, flight paths obstructed by buildings along one or both sides, changing sky access when flying towards corners formed by two buildings or dead ends, and buildings with reflective glass-clad surfaces. The data was analysed to obtain the horizontal position error between Global Positioning System (GPS) position and ground truth derived from Real Time Kinematics (RTK), with considerations for (1) horizontal position uncertainty estimate (EPH) reported by the GPS receiver, (2) no. of visible satellites, and (3) percentage of sky visible (or sky openness ratio, SOR) at various altitudes along the flight paths inside the aforementioned urban environments. The investigation showed that there is no direct correlation between the measured horizontal position error and the reported EPH; thus, the EPH could not be used for the purpose of monitoring navigation performance. The investigation further concluded that there is no universal correlation between the sky openness ratio (SOR) seen by the UAS and the resulting horizontal position error, and a more complex model would need to be considered to translate 3D urban models to expected horizontal navigation uncertainty for the UAS Traffic Management (UTM) airspace.