Passive radio system for real-time drone detection and DoA estimation

The principal objective behind the development of passive radio system is to detect and localize mini remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) and their operators in three dimensions (3D). This paper describes the system architecture, detection procedure and intermediate test results. Goodness-of-Fit (GoF) based spectrum sensing is used to detect the frequency of the transmitted signal of mini-RPAS and its controller. The direction of arrival (DoA) is estimated with the MUSIC algorithm. The implementation of GoF-based wideband spectrum sensing and one dimensional DoA estimation including spatial smoothing and automatic source number detection are detailed in this paper. Several test results are presented to validate the real time operation of the passive radio system.