Drone Detection Sensor With Continuous 2.4 GHz ISM Band Coverage Based on Cost-Effective SDR Platform is a paper by Przemyslaw Flak.

The rapid evolution of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, has brought about significant transformations across various domains in recent years. While drones have opened up new possibilities, their irresponsible and dangerous usage has resulted in numerous hazardous incidents. This research paper introduces a drone detection sensor designed to detect drones using passive radio frequency imaging techniques within a continuous 2.400 GHz-2.483 GHz operational frequency range.

The implementation of the sensor utilizes a combination of Software Defined Radio (SDR) and Field Programmable Logic Array (FPGA) hardware. This approach overcomes the 40 MHz real-time bandwidth limitation observed in other popular SDRs by leveraging low-cost off-the-shelf components. To optimize performance, a hardware realization of the signal processing chain is proposed, which minimizes the data transfer between the SDR and the companion computer while offloading software computations.

The sensor’s effectiveness is validated through experiments conducted in both laboratory and real-life scenarios, and the results are compared with those from other relevant works. In addition to achieving an increased real-time bandwidth, the measurements indicate a 9 dB reduction in detection sensitivity compared to the reference receiver, which aligns with the specifications of the analog RF front-end. The analysis underscores the suitability of the proposed device as a sensor for generating machine learning datasets and as a component within a comprehensive anti-drone system.

Publication Date– August 2021

Drone Detection Sensor With Continuous 2.4 GHz ISM Band Coverage Based on Cost-Effective SDR Platform contains the following main sections:

  • Introduction
  • Related Work
  • Proposed Method
  • Hardware Implementation
  • Results and Discussion
  • Conclusion and Future Work

Open Access Paper. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

C-UAS Hub does not own this content and provides a link for users at the bottom of the page to access it in its original location. This allows the author(s) to track important article metrics related to their work. All credit goes to its rightful owner.

Author- Przemyslaw Flak

Post Image- Passive radio frequency drone detection scheme. Over-the-air signals between the drone and its controller are intercepted by an RF front-end device, transferred to the PC, and post-processed in the software. (Image Credit: Przemyslaw Flak)

For additional multimedia resources, please visit the Multimedia Library.