Tackling the different target dynamics issues in counter drone operations using passive radar

This paper deals with the detection of small unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) and drones in high-density target scenarios such as airport terminal areas. In fact, in such conditions, strong reflections by high radar cross section (RCS) targets are likely to prevent the detection of very weak target echoes. In this work, we aim at overcoming this issue by taking advantage of long coherent processing intervals (CPIs) and by implementing a CLEAN-like multistage algorithm to remove the strongest target contributions. The effectiveness of the proposed strategy is first demonstrated against simulated data representing a typical scenario. Then, a preliminary experimental result is shown, obtained against data collected by the DVB-T based AULOS ® passive radar developed by Leonardo S.p.A..