UAS-Borne Radar for Autonomous Navigation and Surveillance Applications

The autonomous navigation of UAS requires, among others, detect-and-avoid capability as a prerequisite for enabling wide-ranging applications, including the transportation of goods and people. This article presents the design, implementation, and experimental results of a UAS-borne radar system detecting drones. The applications of the proposed system include not only detect-and-avoid systems for safe and autonomous navigation of unmanned aircraft systems but also airborne surveillance of malicious drones in controlled or restricted airspace for mitigating security and privacy threats. The system performance in terms of maximum detection range is evaluated through field tests. The experimental results show that the proposed UAS-borne radar can detect a DJI Phantom 4 and a DJI Matrice 600 Pro at a maximum distance of 440 and 500 meters, respectively. The article also provides insights into the system implementation and integration aspects, discusses future research direction, and stresses the need for standardization efforts to benchmark the required performance levels for UAS-borne radars.