Low-Complexity Portable Passive Drone Surveillance via SDR-Based Signal Processing

This article presents an overview on passive drone detection. An SDR-based, portable universal software radio peripheral (USRP) prototype is developed for detection in two scenarios. In the scenario in which a drone communicates with the ground controller, the cyclostationarity signature of the drone signal and pseudo Doppler principle are employed. For the scenario in which a drone is not sending any signal, a micro Doppler signature generated by the RF signal is exploited for detection and identification.