Experimental Study of Outdoor UAV Localization and Tracking using Passive RF Sensing

Extensive use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is expected to raise privacy and security concerns among individuals and communities. In this context, detection and localization of UAVs will be critical for maintaining safe and secure airspace in the future. In this work, Keysight N6854A radio frequency (RF) sensors are used to detect and locate a UAV by passively monitoring the signals emitted from the UAV. First, the Keysight sensor detects the UAV by comparing the received RF signature with various other UAVs' RF signatures in the Keysight database using an envelope detection algorithm. Afterward, time difference of arrival (TDoA) based localization is performed by a central controller using the sensor data, and the drone is localized with some error. To mitigate the localization error, implementing an extended Kalman filter (EKF) is proposed in this study. The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated on a realistic experimental dataset. EKF requires basic assumptions on the type of motion throughout the trajectory, i.e., the movement of the object is assumed to fit some motion model (MM) such as constant velocity (CV), constant acceleration (CA), and constant turn (CT). In the experiments, an arbitrary trajectory is followed, therefore it is not feasible to fit the whole trajectory into a single MM. Consequently, the trajectory is segmented into sub-parts and a different MM is assumed in each segment while building the EKF model. Simulation results demonstrate an improvement in error statistics when EKF is used if the MM assumption aligns with the real motion.