Onboard Passive Radar System Implementation for Detection and Tracking of Rogue UAVs

As the number of unauthorized operations of unmanned aerial vehicles increases, the protection of public spaces, as well as critical infrastructures against malicious actions has become a major concern. In this work, a prototype onboard passive radar system is presented, based on signals of opportunity and software-defined radio, that is able to detect and track illegal/unauthorized drone operations over a specified region of interest. Specifically, the proposed system, mounted on an unmanned aerial vehicle, aims to detect and track rogue drone operations by incorporating the signals of opportunity that are already available in the environment, such as digital video broadcasting - terrestrial signals, in conjunction with the visual measurements of the unmanned aerial agent. The development of the proposed small, low-cost, and versatile onboard passive radar solution is enabled by technological advancements in software-defined radio, embedded processing units, and signal processing. The design and development of the prototype are presented and its applicability is demonstrated through extensive outdoor experiments.