Technical aspects of creating radiotechnical systems of information and command interface to ensure the functioning of complexes with unmanned aerial vehicles
Authors: Pantenkov D. G. 
Published: November 2021

One of the key components of the complexes with unmanned aerial vehicles (CUAV), which significantly affects the safety and reliability of operation, is the radio link for transmitting command-telemetric and target information of direct radio visibility (radio engineering system of information and command interface) between unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and the ground control and information processing point (GCSP). Heavy-class unmanned aerial vehicles can have several target loads simultaneously – a multispectral optical-electronic system, a digital aerial photo system, a radar system, a radio monitoring system, etc. Due to the fact that the flow of information with the payloads to the input of the radio link during peak time moments can be quite large, severe requirements are imposed as to the equipment of primary processing of the target information aboard the UAV and it’s compression in the recording information, and the bandwidth of the radio link in terms of transmission target information on GCSP for subsequent analysis and processing by the operator of the complex. Technical articles are the justification of modern approaches to the development of radio systems of information and team mates in the functioning of complexes with unmanned aerial vehicles, modeling and analysis of directional properties of the antenna system on the basis of the active phased array antenna (APAA) to ensure that decisions adopted targets CUAV, calculation and modeling of the use of various signal-code structures in the information and command-telemetry channels of the CUAV in order to assess the achievable data transfer rates and the energy budget of radio lines. The main tasks of the article are consideration of the nomenclature of possible target tasks of complexes with UAV, proposals for the technical implementation of radio systems of information and team mates, analysis of the advantages of using APAA as part of an unmanned aerial vehicle and a ground control and information processing point in order to improve the efficiency of UAV complexes in the end, modeling of directional diagrams in the azimuth and angular planes for receiving and transmitting modules and receiving and transmitting panels from the APAA, calculation of the energy budget of information and command radio lines, plotting the dependences of the error probability on the signal-to-noise ratio for various combinations of signal modulations and noise-tolerant encoding for various models of communication channels (additive white Gaussian noise – AWGN and binary-symmetric channel – BSC). The main results of the article include specific practical suggestions and recommendations on hardware and software approaches to the creation of antenna systems based on APAA as part of the CUAV, the effect of using modern approaches (reliability, reduced labor intensity and cost, improved performance characteristics), calculated signal-to-noise ratios for various methods of modulation and encoding, obtained as a result of calculations and mathematical modeling, as well as suggestions and recommendations for the rational use of specific types of signals and codes in the command-telemetry and information channels.