DoA Estimation for Micro and Nano UAV Targets using AWR2243 Cascaded Imaging Radar

Frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radars accurately estimate the target's position and velocity, but the angular resolution is inadequate. The low radar cross section (RCS) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) like micro UAVs (
$0.01m^{2}$
) and nano UAVs (
$0.001m^{2}$
) pose a significant threat to sensitive military and civilian installations. The DoA of the low RCS targets helps in making stealthy countermeasures. In this paper, the DoA of nano and micro UAVs is experimented using Texas instruments AWR2243 cascaded imaging radar in conjunction with a digital signal processing evaluation module (DSP EVM). The data is received from all the available 16 receivers, then the subspace method of multiple signal classification (MUSIC) algorithm is applied to estimate the DoA of the low RCS UAvs in hovering mode. The ground truth of the UAVs is fixed at 10m range and 12 ° azimuth from the center of the radar using engineering protractor. The average estimated DoA for nano and micro UAV s is 12.80° and 11.43°, respectively, for the ground truth DoA. The AWR2243 cascaded imaging radar provides superior performance and suitable candidate for the DoA estimation for micro and nano UAVs compared to existing AWR1642, IWR1642, and IWR6843 radars.