Potential of Passive DVB-T Radar Component Against Illegal UAV Flights

For now many years, illegal UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) flights have been observed in different countries and under various environments. The intent of such illegal flights may cover industrial espionage up to terrorist attacks. Countering such an asymmetric threat is now of increasing and challenging interest for many countries. The main compulsory functions for such an anti-UAV system will be briefly discussed from detection, localization, identification/classification, extraction (an UAV has to be isolated from other detections) to the alert function. After this introduction about the context, a description of a passive DVB-T (Digital Video Broadcasting Terrestrial) radar component will be given, and its potential, in regard to the previously described functions, will be illustrated using experimental results. Such a passive approach will be shortly compared with active radar components. Several measurement campaigns have been conducted with quite a huge variety of nano-small UAVs (multirotors such as ANAFI, Mavik, Phantom 4, F450 up to M600 as well as fixed wings such as ranger, Disco, X8 and X11) evolving under various configurations (bistatic bases, different weather conditions) and a selection of the most meaningful results will be presented.