Measurements and discrimination of drones and birds with a multi-frequency multistatic radar system

Measurements and discrimination of drones and birds with a multi-frequency multistatic radar system

Palamà, Riccardo (Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC/CERCA))
Fioranelli, F. (TU Delft Microwave Sensing, Signals & Systems)
Ritchie, Matthew (University College London)
Inggs, Michael (University of Cape Town)
Lewis, Simon (University of Cape Town)
Griffiths, Hugh (University College London)

2021

This article presents the results of a series of measurements of multistatic radar signatures of small UAVs at L- and X-bands. The system employed was the multistatic multiband radar system, NeXtRAD, consisting of one monostatic transmitter-receiver and two bistatic receivers. NeXtRAD is capable of recording simultaneous bistatic and monostatic data with baselines and two-way bistatic range of the order of a few kilometres. The paper presents an empirical analysis with range-time plots and micro-Doppler signatures of UAVs and birds of opportunity recorded at several hundred metres of distance. A quantitative analysis of the overall signal-to-noise ratio is presented along with a comparison between the power of the signal scattered from the drone body and blades. A simple study with empirically obtained features and four supervised-learning classifiers for binary drone versus non-drone separation is also presented. The results are encouraging with classification accuracy consistently above 90% using very simple features and classification algorithms.

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:1de326fb-b181-4b87-a275-dc33d6dab8e9

https://doi.org/10.1049/rsn2.12060

1751-8784

IET Radar, Sonar and Navigation, 15 (8), 841-852

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2021 Riccardo Palamà, F. Fioranelli, Matthew Ritchie, Michael Inggs, Simon Lewis, Hugh Griffiths