35 GHz FMCW Drone Detection System

Jedrzej Drozdowicz, Maciej Wielgo, Jaroslaw Krzonkalla, Maj Mordzonek,

Piotr Samczynski, Krzysztof Kulpa
Institute of Electronic Systems
Warsaw University of Technology
Warsaw, Poland
Email: psamczyn@elka.pw.edu.pl
Marcin Bryl, Zbigniew Jakielaszek
Air Force Institute of Technology
Warsaw, Poland

Abstract—This paper presents an experimental system ded-

icated for the detection and tracking of small aerial targets
such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in particular small
drones (multirotors). The system was proposed in response
to increasing drone popularity and the related threats. The
hardware and software parts of the system are covered, including
the analogue front–end, FPGA based pre–processing and PC
MONITORED
based processing, detection and tracking. Real life trials are
described with promising results provided. Further research on AREA
the subject is proposed.
Index Terms—radar, drone, detection, UAV.

I. I NTRODUCTION
It is increasingly apparent that nowadays UAV related
tracking UAV
technologies are becoming more and more important. Many
countries have started legal procedures to ration air space and
pilot licenses for drone operators. It is no longer reserved
only for the military: both industry and private users have Radar
gained access to a wide range of UAV technologies. With the
increasing popularity of drones potential threats have arisen, so
it has become important to develop countermeasures such as
small drones detection, localization and interception systems.
There are many ways to detect UAVs. From optical meth- Fig. 1. Principle of the area mode
ods in both visible and IR bands to RF methods — based
on transmission detection or classical active or PCL radar
approaches. This paper focuses on UAV radar detection and C. Power Budget Calculation
presents a promising technique which can also be utilized for For the proposed system the power budget and potential
the tracking, recognition or even ISAR imaging of drones. usability scope were calculated using the following formulas
II. P RACTICAL A PPLICATION C ONSIDERATIONS AND [1]: 
A SSESSMENT P τ Gσλ2
R= 4 (1)
The authors decided to analyse two modes of operation for (4π)3 kTs LSNR
drone detection — area mode and barrier mode. c
Vmax = (2)
A. Area Mode 2Bτ
ΘE
The area mode with a wide beam is to be used for detection, S = πR2 (3)
tracking and imaging UAVs in specific areas. An example of 2π
this mode is presented in Fig. 1. Where:
R — range, P — radar power,
B. Barrier Mode τ — integration time,
The barrier mode, using a narrow beam radar, is more σ — Radar Cross Section, assumed to be 1m2 ,
suitable in the situation where moving objects that can cause λ — wavelength,
false alarms or highly reflective objects that can saturate the k — Boltzmann constant,
radar receiver are in the restricted area. This mode is shown Ts — ambient temperature, assumed to be 290K,
in Fig. 2. L — system losses, omitted in this calculation,

978-1-5090-2518-3/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE

 III. S YSTEM S ETUP D ESCRIPTION
Radar
For the experiment a high resolution 35 GHz FMCW radar
was used. The system is a coherent 35 GHz radar with 1
RESTRICTED GHz bandwidth, primarily designed for high resolution SAR
AREA imaging [2]. The analogue front–end itself has 16 operating
modes, and for the application described in this paper modes
summed up in table III were selected.
TABLE III
R ADAR MODES USED IN THE EXPERIMENT

Mode P RF [kHz] BW [M Hz] Vunamb.max [m/s]

4 1 1000 4.3
7,8 2 600, 1000 8.6
11,12 4 600, 1000 17.1
Radar ALARM
The FMCW radar used in the experiment is equipped with
UAV two receiving antennas. The antennas have a narrow beam
(3◦ ) in the azimuth direction as they were especially designed
for SAR application, so only the barrier mode was tested.
In elevation the antenna beam width is 30◦ . During the trials
the antenna position was fixed, which might be considered
Fig. 2. Principle of the barrier mode
a limitation in regards to the radar coverage area. To obtain
better scanning of the area the system should be modified
SNR — Signal to Noise Ratio, using rotating antennas.
Vmax — maximum velocity of the detectable drone, A. Signal Processing
c — speed of light,
B — bandwidth (100M Hz in this experiment), The schematics of the system is depicted in Fig. 3. The
S — area coverage,
ΘE — beam width in elevation. control
TX DDS
For the calculation, two power levels were chosen: 20 mW as a
representation of a low-power radar and 2 W, corresponding to clock
the maximum power of the radar used. The drone velocity for trigger
the calculation were assumed to be 10 m/s (as for the drones control PC
FPGA
used in tests) or 30 m/s (typical for a military class drone). RX ADC
preprocessing data
processing
visualization
The time of integration was chosen to match those velocities.
The antenna beam width is assumed to be 30◦ . In elevation
and 3◦ (Barrier Mode) or 30◦ (Area Mode) in azimuth. Signal Fig. 3. Simplified diagram of the system
to Noise Ratio as a detection threshold is 10dB for this system.
Calculated parameters are summed up in tables I and II. signal from the receiving antenna is fed to an analogue
to digital converter connected to an FPGA board, which is
TABLE I responsible for preprocessing, such as filtration, decimation
PARAMETERS OF THE BARRIER MODE
and packet formation (one packet contains data from one
P [W ] τ [s] R[km] Vmax [m/s] chirp). The FPGA sends preprocessed radar signals to a PC
0.02 0.1 8.1 15 through a 1 Gb/s Ethernet interface, and the PC is responsible
0.02 0.04 6.4 37.5 for real—time processing.
2 0.1 25.5 15 The processing starts with grouping the signals into a block
2 0.04 20.3 37.5
with a chosen integration time with overlap. The signal
processing algorithm for the presented system consists of
TABLE II signal windowing and two dimensional DFT calculation. The
PARAMETERS OF THE AREA MODE processing scheme is presented in Fig. 4. and its result is range
Doppler visualization. DSP software was implemented in C
P [W ] τ [s] S[km2 ] Vmax [m/s]
0.02 0.1 5.4 15
programming language.
0.02 0.04 3.4 37.5
2 0.1 253 15 B. Scenario Description
2 0.04 34 37.5 The tests were performed in a facility at the Air Force
Institute of Technology, Poland. Aerial photography of the area
 Fig. 4. Processing scheme

Radar Fig. 6. Quad–rotor DJI PHANTOM 2

beam direction

test area

Fig. 5. Aerial photography of the experiment area. Image 2016

c Digital-
Globe, Google
Fig. 7. Octocopter DJI S1000 PREMIUM

is shown in Fig. 5. The radar was placed on a balcony on the

1st floor, 5 meters above the ground. The UAVs distance to the
radar was in the range of 30 – 90 m. The UAVs used were a
small sized DJI PHANTOM 2 (see Fig. 6) and a medium sized
DJI S1000 PREMIUM (see Fig. 7). Typical flight velocity of
the UAVs was below 10 m/s.
The UAVs were flying backward and forward around the
experiment area, crossing the radar antenna beam at different
ranges, altitudes and with different radial velocities. Obtained
detections are illustrated in the next secion.

IV. R ESULTS
The following figures present example results of drone de-
tection. Images show the velocity (Doppler) — range planes. It
is clearly visible that strong UAVs echoes are observed. Figs. 8 Fig. 8. Range Doppler map with PHANTOM 2 echo
and 9 show the echo from PHANTOM 2, and the following
Figs. 10 and 11 illustrate the Octocopter DJI detection. The
figures present snapshots from processing application scaled marked. Wide Doppler spread come from the UAVs rotating
in meters horizontally and meters per second vertically. The parts that often vary for different units. Therefore the echo
colorbar units ar arbitrary. characteristics can be used for target recognition and classifi-
Because of the high carrier frequency, wide Doppler side- cation. Also it is possible to perform target imaging in ISAR
lobes occur. In Fig. 8 drone echo and sidelobes have been mode.
 scenarios. Further research also includes the potential analysis
of connecting the UAV detector with a RF drone defender to
allow the active, autonomous guarding of particularly sensitive
areas. It is also important to design a system that would
combine data from multiple radars and other sensors to provide
even better performance. Another path of further system
development involves a method of obtaining ISAR images of
detected UAVs, which would allow for classification.
VI. C ONCLUSIONS
The system proved to be functional, and the UAVs were
detected, imaged and their velocity estimated. The usability
of the barrier mode was confirmed and plans for further tests
were laid down.
Fig. 9. Range Doppler map with PHANTOM 2 echo ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The radar used in the described experiment was developed
under the project entitled The use of microwave techniques
for ground surface monitoring (PBS1/A9/15/2012) funded by
the Polish Centre for Research and Development and realized
by the Warsaw University of Technology and the Air Force
Institute of Technology.
R EFERENCES
[1] Skolnik M., Radar Handbook, Third Edition, McGraw–Hill Companies,
2008
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K. ; Malanowski, M. ; Kulpa, K. ; Nowakowski, M. ; Krzonkala, J. ;
Mordzonek, M. ; Bryl, M. Experimental results of DANIEL–35 SAR
system tests , Radar Symposium (IRS), 2015 16th International, 24–26
June 2015
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Fig. 10. Range Doppler map with Octocopter DJI echo loaded/unloaded micro-drones using multistatic radar in Electronics
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Fig. 11. Range Doppler map with Octocopter DJI echo

Single detection conveys information about UAVs distance

to radar, radial velocity, size, type and even shape. It is also
possible to determine targets altitude using measurements
from two antennas.

V. F UTURE R ESEARCH
The authors plan to perform further tests with a wide beam
antenna to evaluate the area mode performance in various