SDRadar Under Fading Channel Using GNU Radio Tools

Recently, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have entered the commercial market and have been adopted by both amateurs and experts. This proliferation of U A V s, now known as drones, is accompanied by a multiplicity of risks. Thus, to manage and control this new technology, monitoring and countering systems are required. In this research paper, the design and simulation of a drone detection system are discussed. The system is designed using the GNU Radio platform and its Out of Tree (OOT) modules and examples. It implements a Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FM CW) radar to detect a single target with a Radar Cross Section (RCS) of 0.01 m2 and a velocity of 18 m/s, which matches that of a micro drone. The system is to be implemented with a Software Defined Radio (SDR) and is thus limited to operating frequencies between 1 GHz and 6 GHz, that is L-band, S-band, and C-band. This research paper then deploys channel modeling of the wireless channel between the radar transceiver and the target. An analysis of six models is laid out in the study. For our channel model, we consider a fading model with both Rayleigh and Rician scenarios, and we study the effect of Doppler shift on detection and estimation accuracy. The simulation tests showcase that the Doppler shift doesn't notably affect radar accuracy when using a Rician channel where a Line of Sight (LOS) is present. However, when using a Rayleigh channel, accuracy would be negatively affected in the case of a high Doppler shift.