Software Defined Radio for Analyzing Drone Communication Protocols

The aim of this research is to determine the possibilities of using commercial off the shelf FPGA based Software Defined Radio Systems to analyze and understand small drone communication protocols in order to hijack or smart jam the receiver. A study on decoding the DSM2 protocol of communication is presented. In order to understand the protocol, raw RF data were collected using Software Defined Radio and LabView software. A set of tools were written in MAT LAB to analyze the data, extract the bursts, perform synchronization and demodulate the chips. Understanding the communication is vital when creating a counter drone system. The possibility of smart jamming the DSM2 protocol of communication is analyzed in the final part of the paper.