Optical vs Inertial Navigation and Signal Amplification

GNSS (Global navigation satellite system) at the moment has four major players: GPS (Global positioning system), operated by the USA; GLONASS (Global Navigation Satellite System), operated by Russia; EU's Galileo; China's BeiDou Navigation Satellite System. All of them use radio frequency based technology to operate, and as such, have well-known weaknesses, which can cause problems in certain environments, and as well are abused by drone jamming equipment - GPS jam and spoof is the number one weapon in anti-drone warfare. At the moment, there are already a few options available if one wants to operate UAV in a GNSS-compromised area. First and foremost - the Inertial Navigation System (INS) comes as standard equipment of UAVs or even part of the Autopilot unit. INS is crucial for aircraft stability and fills in gaps between GNSS acquisitions. Like almost all non-GPS navigation systems, inertial navigation is prone to the “stacking error“ problem and gives increasingly higher errors over any longer distance. Also, INS cannot calculate wind drift factor, which in higher altitudes may easily reach a few hundred meters over a kilometer traveled. Another option is signal filtering and amplification. It is quite a mature technology, and some excellent products in the market are made by Chelton, Tualcom, Novatel, and BAE, to name a few. These anti-jammers work well in full-scale aircraft and large UAVs but are unsuitable for lighter or long-distance aircraft due to size and massive power consumption. Depending on the version, Pixpro Petrel can be as light as 150 grams and use less than 2W of power during operation. Also, due to reliance on visual information only, Pixpro Petrel-equipped aircraft can fully function in 100% radio silence mode, i.e., be utterly immune to GPS jamming attempts, telemetry jamming, or hijacking. Also, due to UART and DroneCAN connections, it is very versatile compatibility-wise.