UAV micro-Doppler signature analysis using DVB-S based passive radar

Drones and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly popular, thus posing danger and threats to infrastructures and public safety. A technology for drone detection and classification would therefore significantly increase the level of security. In scenarios such as concerts, sport events, trade fairs, or in any situation where significant aggregation of people is present, such techniques should be non-invasive. That means they do not have to pose an additional threat to people themselves. To this end, passive radars offer an appealing solution, since they are able to offer a non-cooperative surveillance while not emitting any electromagnetic signal. On the contrary, they rely on existing transmitting infrastructure (also referred to as illuminators of opportunity, IoO), such as broadcasting signal sources (FM radio, terrestrial and satellite digital video broadcasting, cellular communication and so on). In this work, the possibility to exploit satellite televisio n based passive radar for UAV detection is analyzed by experimental validation. In addition, micro-Doppler signatures for drones have been extracted, which might give information for subsequent UAV classification.