Radar Recognition of Multi-Propeller Drones using Micro-Doppler Linear Spectra

Abstract

This paper proposes to perform radar recognition of multi-propeller drones using micro-Doppler linear spectral pattern in long Doppler coherent processing interval (CPI) circumstances. It focuses on the investigation of the influence of geometry design and motion variables, such as blade number, blade shape, drone’s design geometry and propeller synchronisation, on the micro-Doppler spectral pattern. We propose suitable scalar features for the characterisation of these patterns measured within a long (relatively to propellers rotation period) CPI. A thin-wire model was used to simulate drones micro-Doppler spectra for various input variables. Proposed features are extracted from the simulated micro-Doppler spectra for further processing in a support vector machine (SVM), with the purpose of demonstrating the radar recognition of multi-propeller drones based on these features.