Distributed UAV state estimation in UTM context

This paper proposes the application of a hybrid consensus on information (CI) and consensus on measurements (CM) algorithm, named HCMCI, to deal with the Distributed State Estimation (DSE) problem for a set of cooperating UAVs equipped with heterogeneous on board sensors and limited range communication devices. The benefit of the proposed algorithm is to allow to each vehicle to estimate position and velocity of the entire set of vehicles using only its own on board sensors and the information received only from the adjacent vehicles. The meaning of the theoretical conditions required to guarantee the stability of the estimate are discussed, with respect to the particular application. Numerical simulation are presented of different flight scenarios meaningful for the UAS Traffic Management (UTM) context.