Quadratic-Kalman-Filter-Based Sensor Fault Detection Approach for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Sensors are crucial for the control of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). However, sensor faults will inevitably appear over time. Therefore, it is important to develop a sensor fault detection approach for the reliability of UAV. This article presents a novel model-based UAV fault detection approach based on quadratic Kalman filter (QKF). First, an accurate kinematic and dynamic model of UAVs is established, where the model is linearized and discretized for Kalman filter (KF). Second, the first KF is used for denoising, the secondKF is used to detrend, and residuals are calculated for detection. It is worth mentioning that the second KF is a modified Sage–Husa adaptive KF, which can automatically estimate the measurement noise variance. Compared with traditional approaches, this approach has the advantages of noise reduction, self-adaptation, divergence avoidance, and high detection rate. Simulation and experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach, which can accurately detect the abrupt and incipient fault of an inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensor. At the same time, it can get the higher fault detection rates (FDRs) compared with conventional KF. Furthermore, this approach also provides the leading information and foundation for UAV fault-tolerant control.