ISAR Imaging of Drone Swarms at 77 GHz

Abstract

The proliferation of easily available, internet-purchased drones, coupled with the emergence of coordinated drone swarms, poses a significant security threat for airspace. Detecting these swarms is crucial to prevent potential accidents, criminal misuse, and airspace disruptions. This paper proposes a novel inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging technique for high-resolution reconstruction of drone swarms at 77 GHz millimeter wave (mmWave) frequency, offering a valuable tool for military and defense antidrone systems. The key parameters affecting down-range and cross-range resolution (0.05 m), ultimately enabling the generation of detailed ISAR images are discussed. Here, we create diverse scenarios encompassing various swarm formations, sizes, and payload configurations by employing ANSYS simulations. To enhance image quality, different window functions are evaluated, and the Hamming window is selected due to its highest peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) (16.3645) and structural similarity (SSIM) (0.9067) values, ensuring superior noise reduction and structural preservation. The results demonstrate that the effectiveness of high-resolution ISAR imaging in accurately detecting and characterizing drone swarms pave the way for enhanced airspace security measures.