ISAR Imaging for Drone Detection Based on Backprojection Algorithm Using Millimeter-Wave Fast Chirp Modulation MIMO Radar

Abstract

In this paper, we propose an inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging method using a millimeter wave (mmW) fast chirp modulation (FCM) multi-input and multi-output (MIMO) radar for drone detection. To obtain high-resolution ISAR images, the backprojection algorithm is adopted for the ISAR processing. This algorithm is suitable for ISAR imaging of a moving drone with an irregular motion. The measurement experiments were conducted using flying drones (DJI Phantom 3, DJI Mavic Pro and DJI Mavic Mini) in indoor situations to examine the effectiveness of our proposal. The measurement results demonstrated that the proposed method could generate the high-resolution ISAR images enough to recognize the approximate size and shape of each drone.