Drone’s Angle-of-Arrival Estimation Using a Switched-Beam Antenna and Single-Channel Receiver

In this study, we propose a method to estimate the Angle-of-Arrival (AoA) of OFDM-based drone signals with wideband and burst characteristics using only a single-channel receiver and a switched-beam antenna. First, six circularly arranged directional antennas are time-division controlled using RF switches to measure the received power of each antenna. Next, the maximum beam pattern and the measured power of each antenna are synthesized in vector form, and the direction of the synthesized vector becomes the angle of arrival of the drone signal. To verify the proposed method, an experiment was conducted using the video signal of DJI Phantom 4 Pro with a bandwidth of 10 MHz. As a result, it was confirmed that stable angle-of-arrival estimation of drone video signals was possible with an average error of less than 5°. The proposed system has the advantage of being able to estimate the AoA of a drone with only a single receiver without the need for synchronization. Therefore, the proposed system is expected to be used as a low-cost, compact, and highly portable anti-drone system.