Airspeed-Aided Inertial Navigation with Pseudovanes and Non-Optical Sensors for GNSS-and Vision-Denied UAV Environments

Felipe O. Silva, Guillermo E. V. Hernandez, and Cristino de Souza Jr.

Peer Reviewed

Abstract:	Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are widely used for applications such as surveillance, photogrammetry, and disaster management, requiring accurate and resilient Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) systems. The predominant navigation method integrates an Inertial Navigation System (INS) with Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) measurements. While GNSS provides long-term position stability, their signals are vulnerable to multipath effects, ionospheric scintillation, jamming, and spoofing, necessitating alternative navigation solutions. Vision-based approaches have been proposed to replace GNSS, but they degrade in feature-sparse environments such as deserts and open seas. Thus, UAVs in GNSS- and vision-denied environments require non-optical sensors for navigation augmentation. This work investigates the integration of non-optical sensors to mitigate INS position drift, with a particular focus on airspeed sensors—specifically pitot tubes—within an Error State Extended Kalman Filter (ES-EKF) framework. We present a novel integration scheme between the INS and pitot tube, constraining lateral and vertical body-frame airspeed components, i.e., incorporating “pseudovane” measurements. Additionally, we evaluate the use of other commonly available non-optical aiding sensors in UAV applications, including a three-axial magnetometer, a barometer, and a temperature probe, in various combinations. A total of 14 integration architectures are assessed, combining: (a) pseudovanes-based Zero Velocity Updates (ZVUs); (b) Loosely vs. Tightly coupled (LC vs. TC) barometer/magnetometer fusion; and (c) navigation vs. body frame wind velocity error modeling. As the main contributions of this work, we show that: (a) contrary to what one would expect, integration of the pitot tube without pseudovanes and without (or incomplete) wind velocity error state augmentation leads to degraded navigation performance; and (b) the best-performing approach (TC pitot and pseudovanes-based ES-EKF with navigation frame wind velocity state estimation) significantly improves UAV navigation resilience in a GNSS/vision-denied environment, reducing mean horizontal position drift to 0.86 m/s. A real-world flight experiment using a Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) UAV and conducted over a desert region confirms the adequacy of the results.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 38th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2025) September 8 - 12, 2025 Hilton Baltimore Inner Harbor Baltimore, Maryland
Pages:	1570 - 1584
Cite this article:	Silva, Felipe O., Hernandez, Guillermo E. V., de Souza, Cristino, Jr., "Airspeed-Aided Inertial Navigation with Pseudovanes and Non-Optical Sensors for GNSS-and Vision-Denied UAV Environments," Proceedings of the 38th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2025), Baltimore, Maryland, September 2025, pp. 1570-1584. https://doi.org/10.33012/2025.20274
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