Integrating ground surveillance with aerial surveillance for enhanced amateur drone detection

Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) are becoming increasingly popular for amateur use, but their arbitrary deployment poses severe public safety threats to critical infrastructures, such as airports. Typically an Amateur Unmanned Aerial System (AUAS) communicates with a ground control station (GCS) through a telemetry radio, which keeps transmitting data in poor connection conditions. The accuracy of AUASs detection is of great significance. In this paper, we propose a novel surveillance framework which leverages Surveillance Unmanned Aerial Systems (SUASs) to detect AUASs. The approximate position of an AUAS is first estimated by Ground Surveillance Nodes (GSNs) with radio receivers, and SUASs are then activated to determine its precise position. Different from previous research, this framework not only leverages both ground and aerial surveillance capabilities, but also integrates both radio and image processing techniques, thus achieving enhanced AUAS detection capability. This platform has the potential to be integrated with other advanced technologies, providing the recognition of radio signals and imagery for a holistic solution of effective AUAS detection.