Long Range wireless uav transmission

[Felthamg]

Hey everyone,

Our team at the university of Toronto is currently designing a UAV system to enter a contest put on by UVS Canada. We are relatively new in the field and we need some help.

The competition calls for a large range of operation, the UAV is supposed to fly over the forests of Canada to search for forest fires. A ground station needs to talk back and forth with the UAV to send/receive information.

I'm not entirely sure about the maximum range of operation required but lets say <5km for now. What kind of transmission set up could we use to communicate to the UAV from a ground station at these distances? The type of information sent/received would most likely be waypoint instructions, heading, airspeed, altitude, and maybe some visual images.

we need suggestions!

thank you

[meng.wei]

Hey Graham

We are on the same team and, yeah, we are looking for someway of establishing long range communication for telemetry and command upload. So far I am aware Aerocomm and one of the XBee models could potentially fulfill that role, but they are currently used in extending remote control ranges. Anyone with some hints or suggestions for us with long range UAV communications would be greatly appreciated!

Another thing I should add is we are also looking for some reliable way of streaming video from the aircraft, possibly two video streams (one for vision and another for IR), which would save us from doing vision processing onboard. The problem is all the video TX system I've looked into so far are single channel 900MHz or 2.4Ghz, and the frequency planning gets messy with two video streams plus a data link.

If the experienced folks here have any suggestions or hints to share please do!

Thank you!

[DrDon]

A simple and cost effective way of having two cameras is to multiplex the two video feeds and only have one video transmitter. You can switch between the two systems via a command from the data link.

Rarely do you use both visual and IR spectra cameras at the same time.

Data links: Digi 9XTend
Video links: rangevideo.com (multiple available @ 900MHz and 2.4 GHz)

Regards,
Dr. Don
http://www.iat-llc.com

[Owild1]

XPS system would work well for you talk to Jim there and ask him about boosted trans since you not restricted as we are in US

[Owild1]

http://www.xtremepowersystems.net/index.php this is the link and its been flawless on 30 aircraft here at Flight-Ready UAV RC home of the world's largest Telemaster at 18'

[patrickegan]

UVS Canada is a good group. :)

Is Transport Canada okay with flying beyond VLOS?