UAV Detection Based on the Variance of Higher-Order Cumulants

Due to the popularity of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), UAV detection technology has attracted considerable attention. The existing UAV detection methods either require additional equipment or spectrum costs, or have limited working scenarios, making them limited in widespread deployment for the security issues brought about by the explosive growth of drones. In order to widely deploy UAV detection for preventing civil UAVs, the detection based on existing densely distributed communication networks is a reliable method, i.e. integrated sensing and communication (ISAC). However, existing ISAC technologies still require the allocation of time-frequency resources to sensing. We propose a UAV detection method that can be used in existing transceivers and operate in parallel with communication and without consuming resources. UAV flights influence electromagnetic environments during signal propagation, and the proposed method detects UAVs based on the variance of high-order cumulants. In this paper, the principle of the method is deduced and proven, and the detection performance is analysed. Explicit expressions for the detection and false alarm probabilities are obtained, and the influencing factors are investigated. Finally, the feasibility of the proposed method is verified experimentally.