Ricerc@Sapienza

This paper deals with the detection of small unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) and drones in high-density target scenarios such as airport terminal areas. In fact, in such conditions, strong reflections by high radar cross section (RCS) targets are likely to prevent the detection of very weak target echoes. In this work, we aim at overcoming this issue by taking advantage of long coherent processing intervals (CPIs) and by implementing a CLEAN-like multistage algorithm to remove the strongest target contributions.

In this paper, we consider the exploitation of a DVB-T based Passive Radar for simultaneous short and long range surveillance of drones and aircrafts, respectively. In detail, an airport terminal area surveillance application is considered and the effectiveness of the employed sensor is investigated with reference to the two search tasks to be accomplished simultaneously. For the purpose of our analysis, experimental data have been collected by means of the DVB-T based AULOS® passive sensor developed by Leonardo S.p.A against both a very small RCS drone and conventional air traffic.