Design Study of a Short-Range Airborne UAV Radar for Human Monitoring

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have many attributes making them advantageous in many surveillance applications, especially the control of borders against illegal trafficking. UAVs are less expensive than conventional aircraft, possess greater maneuverability, and are remotely-operated by its pilot/or autopilot. An important task in border control, however, is to be able to detect and monitor the activities of any people in the region. In particular, discrimination between friendly and non-cooperative targets is of high importance. Over recent years, micro-Doppler analysis has come to the forefront of research as a means to identify not just human targets, but recognize activities as well, using ground-based radar. This work studies the top-level design and tradeoffs involved in the development of a short-range UAV for human monitoring, such as power and weight requirements, frequency and type of radar and signal processing algorithms. As a case study, the performance attainable of a lightweight radar similar to IMSAR's NanoSAR-C with the TAN100 UAV for a human monitoring mission is analyzed.