Abstract:
A UAV Antenna Tracker System is a system that tracks where in the sky or where on the ground an aircraft is. There are multiple methods for an antenna tracker to do this. One is to use RADAR to find the aircraft and feed the altitude and angles to the antenna tracker, this is proven to be too expensive to support the UAV development program at UniKL MIAT. Another way is to have the aircraft to emit a signal (or two) and a receiver at the antenna tracker electronically compares what it receives and uses that information to point the antenna(s) with. This works as one emitted signal is slightly weaker than the other. This project discusses the way the APM Mission Planner does it. It is far more simple and yet very much as effective as the other mentioned methods. It is by far less expensive too since all UAV at UniKL MIAT uses the APM2 control boards which is compatible with the APM Mission Planner. A UAV Antenna Tracker System usually costs almost USD 1000. This is proven to be costly and too expensive to have more than one unit to support the vast progress of the UAV development at UniKL MIAT. Therefore, this project will focus on building a prototype that is low cost and effective to support the UAV development program at UniLK MIAT. To achieve the low cost objective, this project uses the parts and hardware that are mostly available in Malaysia market and neighbouring region. This will save cost especially the shipping cost. Some of the parts will be made from scratch rather than buying a ready-made item. As a result, the entire project cost less than RM1000 (USD312). The cost saving is almost one third of the ready-made UAV Antenna Tracker in the market.
