Telemetry and Video Surveillance System in a UAV for the Control and Monitoring of Long-Distance Missions

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are multidisciplinary technological tools, which are used in the military area for surveillance, reconnaissance and intelligence tasks in conflict zones. Due to its versatility and performance, this manuscript describes the implementation of a telemetry and video surveillance system to develop long-range missions in a UAV prototype. Communications subsystems and a ground station are integrated, with which an unmanned aerial system (UAS) is formed, carrying out the necessary calibrations and configurations. After a set of tests and the necessary adjustments, a long-distance mission is carried out and its energy consumption, height reached and trajectory tracking are analyzed. In addition, the video signal level obtained and the percentage of telemetry signal in each of the tests are established, which managed to be 90% with a distance greater than 4 km. They have good benefits, with a low economic investment, representing an interesting proposal for developing countries with a limited budget for their improvement. © 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.