Design and Implementation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Detection Radar

In recent years, the growing use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) poses significant risks to public safety / personnel security. This prompts the need to deploy early-warning systems, especially near law-enforcement agencies and military installations. The aim of this work is to realize the idea by designing and implementing such a system that can detect incoming UAV parameters (Range, Speed, and Angle-of-Arrival) efficiently. In this regard, two-pronged approach is used -first, by successfully detecting multiple targets on a Pulse Doppler radar designed in MATLAB, and then the concept is realized on Texas Instruments (TI) AWR1843 module by detecting a single UAV and resolving its localization parameters alongwith speed. The results are found promising and effective as compared to the research already done in the field. This work has proven the potent AWR1843 module's capability to detect UAV with significantly small Radar Cross Section (RCS). Target detection is achieved in real-time by successfully addressing memory-overflow issues particularly during Fast-Fourier Transform (FFT) implementation stage. This idea has the potential to be extrapolated across different sectors to improve security, automation, and safety measures.