System identification of a small unmanned aerial vehicle based on time and frequency domain technologies

The usage of system identification has been increasing in small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) model development. Most of previous methods for small UAV model identification has limitations in deriving an accurate model with wide frequency spectrum, or the identification results rely on the selection of weight parameters. These motive us to seek an efficient method to obtain accurate small UAV models. The method proposed in this paper uses pseudo-random signal (PRS) as test signal in small UAV model identification experiment for the first time. By using PRS, a small UAV's modes can be stimulated sufficiently. In this method, we also combine the advantages of time and frequency domain identification technologies together by increasing the order of target models in time domain identification and then deceasing model order by using frequency domain identification. The model validation results in time and frequency domain proved the fidelity of identified models and feasibility of our proposed small UAV model identification method.