Antenna Tracking

Antenna Trackers are systems that track your vehicle’s location, and use this information to correctly align a directional antenna. This approach significantly improves the range over which signals can be both sent and received from the ground station.

ArduPilot supports two methods for Antenna Tracking. Both methods use GPS information from the vehicle and ground station to aim the antenna. The main difference is that the AntennaTracker is independent of any particular GCS.

AntennaTracker

  • The AntennaTracker firmware turns an ArduPilot-supported board (Pixhawk, APM2, etc) into the controller for an antenna tracker.
  • The board calculates the required antenna direction and can drive the antenna’s servos directly.
  • Mission Planner (or any other GCS) may be used, but is not required.

Mission Planner-based GPS Tracking

  • Uses the Mission Planner GCS to determine the direction to aim the antenna.
  • The PC running Mission Planner must have GPS.
  • You will need a special servo driver board to control the servo’s.