In the typical unmanned aircraft system (UAS), several unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) traveling at a velocity of 40-100km/h and with altitudes of 150-1,000m will be used to cover a wide service area. Therefore, Doppler shifts occur in the carrier frequencies of the transmitted and received signals due to changes in the line-of-sight velocity between the UAVs and the terrestrial terminal. By observing multiple Doppler shift values for different UAVs or observing a single UAV at different local times, it is possible to detect the user position on the ground. We conducted computer simulations for evaluating user position detection accuracy and Doppler shift distribution in several flight models. Further, a positioning accuracy index (PAI), which can be used as an index for position detection accuracy, was proposed as the absolute value of cosine of the inner product between two gradient vectors formed by Doppler shifts to evaluate the relationship between the location of UAVs and the position of the user. In this study, a maximum positioning error estimation method related to the PAI is proposed to approximate the position detection accuracy. Further, computer simulations assuming a single UAV flying on the curved routes such as sinusoidal routes with different cycles are conducted to clarify the effectiveness of the flight route in the aspects of positioning accuracy and latency by comparing with the conventional straight line fight model using the PAI and the proposed maximum positioning error estimation method.

Unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) have been developed and studied as temporal communication systems for emergency and rescue services during disasters, such as earthquakes and serious accidents. In a typical UAS model, several unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are used to provide services over a large area. The UAV is comprised of a transmitter and receiver to transmit/receive the signals to/from terrestrial stations and terminals. Therefore, the carrier frequencies of the transmitted and received signals experience Doppler shifts due to the variations in the line-of-sight velocity between the UAV and the terrestrial terminal. Thus, by observing multiple Doppler shifts from different UAVs, it is possible to detect the position of a user that possesses a communication terminal for the UAS. This study aims to present a methodology for position detection based on the least-squares method to the Doppler shift frequencies. Further, a positioning accuracy index is newly proposed, which can be used as an index for measuring the position accurately, instead of the dilution-of-precision (DOP) method, which is used for global positioning systems (GPSs). A computer simulation was conducted for two different flight route models to confirm the applicability of the proposed positioning method and the positioning accuracy index. The simulation results confirm that the parameters, such as the flight route, the initial position, and velocity of the UAVs, can be optimized by using the proposed positioning accuracy index.