A Smart Radar Signal Processing Solution for Ground-Based UAVs Surveillance

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have become widely used in civilian and military applications. There is a recognised need for UAVs surveillance against their malicious use. In this context, radar has emerged as a powerful tool in detecting and tracking UAVs. However, the task is quite complicate due to the low-altitude, low velocity and low radar cross section of small UAVs. In this paper, a smart radar signal processing solution in the presence of multiple unresolved UAVs is devised and applied to UAVs surveillance, which fully capitalizes on the coherent integration, constant false alarm rate detection, target multiplicity test and sparse methods to achieve low computational complexity and high angular resolution. At the analysis stage, numerical simulations are carried out to highlight the capability of proposed solution to detect UAVs and resolve them when they are closely spaced.