INTERFERENCE OF RADAR DETECTION OF DRONES BY BIRDS

Recently, consumer drones have encroached upon airports and pose a potential threat to aviation safety. Radar is an effective remote sensing tool to detect and track flying drones. Radar echoes from flying birds are assumed to be clutters when a radar is detecting drones. Yet, few studies have reported how radar echoes from flying birds interfere with the detection of drones, how similar radar cross section (RCS) and flight feature of birds and drones are, and why the flying birds cause trouble when radar identifies signals from the drone. In this study, we collected 3900× 256 of Ku-band radar echoes of flying birds and consumer drones. The targets consist of a pigeon, a crane, waterfowl, and a DJI Phantom 3 Vision drone. We compared the maximum detectable range of birds and drones, the time series and the Doppler spectrum of radar echoes from the birds and the drone, considering oncoming and outgoing radar data with respect to radar location. The statistical results indicate that flying birds have similar RCS, same velocity range, similar signal fluctuation, and approximate signal amplitude. Our results of radar automatic target recognition (ATR) illuminate that the identification probability of airborne drones will be lower due to the interference of the radar signal by flying birds. Above all, these facts confirm that flying birds are the main cause of interference when a radar is detecting and identifying airborne drones.