A Survey on Detection, Classification, and Tracking of UAVs Using Radar and Communications Systems

Wahab Khawaja*, Martins Ezuma, Vasilii Semkin, Fatih Erden, Ozgur Ozdemir, Ismail Guvenc

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for a variety of commercial, civilian, and defense applications has increased many folds in recent years. While UAVs are expected to transform future air operations, there are instances where they can be used for malicious purposes. In this context, the detection, classification, and tracking (DCT) of UAVs (DCT-U) for safety and surveillance of national air space is a challenging task when compared to DCT of manned aerial vehicles. In this survey, we discuss the threats and challenges from malicious UAVs and we subsequently study three radio frequency (RF)-based systems for DCT-U. These RF-based systems include radars, communication systems, and RF analyzers. Radar systems are further divided into conventional and modern radar systems, while communication systems can be used for joint communications and sensing (JC&S) in active mode and act as a source of illumination to passive radars for DCT-U. The limitations of the three RF-based systems are also provided. The survey briefly discusses non-RF systems for DCT-U and their limitations. Future directions based on the lessons learned are provided at the end of the survey.

Original languageEnglish
JournalIEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 2025
MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

Funding

This work is funded in part by the NSF Platforms forAdvanced Wireless Research (PAWR) award CNS-1939334 for the AERPAW project.

Keywords

  • Classification
  • detection
  • joint communications and sensing (JC&S)
  • radar
  • radio frequency (RF) analyzers
  • tracking
  • unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)

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