Measurement and Analysis of the Radar and Infrared Signature of UAVs

CDS Visiting Research Student Programme 2013

Proposers: Dr Alessio Balleri and Prof Mark Richardson Abstract Automatic detection and classification of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) under all weather and clutter conditions is a key challenge for modern radar and infrared systems. In recent years, UAVs have been increasingly deployed in many military and civil applications of radar and infrared to provide remote surveillance, target prosecution, search & rescue and this capability is becoming available to unfriendly and enemy forces as well. UAVs are very sophisticated and diverse. They present different sizes depending on the type of mission they have to perform. Micro-UAVs can be deployed to gather intelligence and for espionage and their size is often comparable to that of large insects. Conventional UAVs are mainly used for longer range defence missions and their size is comparable to that of birds or light weight small aircraft. There is a pressing need to be able to detect and classify enemy UAVs as well as to detect and track co-operative UAVs for monitoring purposes. UAVs are often characterised by very low Radar and Infrared signatures. Because of their limited size they only reflect a small amount of power and this makes it difficult for an active sensor to detect them with a high level of confidence. In addition to this it currently remains impossible for modern systems to be able to discriminate between UAVs and birds, insects and small aircraft when a detection occurs. In this project we propose 1) to measure and analyse the radar and infrared signature of a range of UAV models 2) to study typical UAV Doppler and micro-Doppler signatures and 3) to build the foundation towards the development of (static and Doppler) signature based classification methods to distinguish between UAVs and other targets such as insects, birds and small light weight aircraft. This project will complement a research programme funded by Chemring Group PLC which is due start in 2013 and that will support an additional full time PhD student on this subject.
Keywords: Radar Cross Section (RCS), Infrared Signature, Doppler signatures.

Pre-requisites: A solid background on the principles of electromagnetism, radar and infrared systems. Proposed Questions 1) Describe a conventional radar matched filtering technique and explain in what terms it is optimal compared to other filter designs. Explain what procedure you would suggest to use to measure the Radar Cross Section of a lightweight aircraft and what type of reference targets you would deploy for calibration. 2) Describe the main components that would contribute to the infrared signature of a light aircraft. What infrared wavelength ranges would these signatures be in and what would the relative strengths be for the various components?