Spurious RF signals emitted by mini-UAVs

Schleijpen, R.; Voogt, V.; Zwamborn, P.; van den Oever, J.

doi:10.1117/12.2240844

Spurious RF signals emitted by mini-UAVs

Title

Spurious RF signals emitted by mini-UAVs

Author

Schleijpen, R.
Voogt, V.
Zwamborn, P.
van den Oever, J.

Contributor

Schleijpen, R.H.M.A. (editor)
Stein, K.U. (editor)

Publication year

2016

Abstract

This paper presents experimental work on the detection of spurious RF emissions of mini Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (mini-UAV). Many recent events have shown that mini-UAVs can be considered as a potential threat for civil security. For this reason the detection of mini-UAVs has become of interest to the sensor community. The detection, classification and identification chain can take advantage of different sensor technologies. Apart from the signatures used by radar and electro-optical sensor systems, the UAV also emits RF signals. These RF signatures can be split in intentional signals for communication with the operator and un-intentional RF signals emitted by the UAV. These unintentional or spurious RF emissions are very weak but could be used to discriminate potential UAV detections from false alarms. The goal of this research was to assess the potential of exploiting spurious emissions in the classification and identification chain of mini-UAVs. It was already known that spurious signals are very weak, but the focus was on the question whether the emission pattern could be correlated to the behaviour of the UAV. In this paper experimental examples of spurious RF emission for different types of mini-UAVs and their correlation with the electronic circuits in the UAVs will be shown. © 2016 SPIE. The Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)

Subject

2015 Observation, Weapon & Protection Systems
ED - Electronic Defence
TS - Technical Sciences
Detection of mini-UAVs
RF detection
Spurious RF emissions
Chains
Network security
Unmanned vehicles
Classification and identifications
Electrooptical sensors
Mini unmanned aerial vehicles
Potential threats
RF detection
Sensor technologies
Spurious emissions
Spurious signals
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV)