Dronend

The development of small size and low-cost drones has resulted in an ever-larger number of such devices being currently used in several types of different applications. In this context, serious questions can be asked regarding the safety issues that the use of such devices can raise. Several situations of major security problems that were caused by such devices were reported. In order to combat this kind of security problems, defense systems have to be developed in order to identify, localize and take control over a drone that enters a restricted or no-fly area.

The main scope of the DronEnd project was to develop an affordable and effective drone defense system based on software-defined radio (SDR) that would be able to detect, survey, localize, and take control of multiple drones.

The developed drone defense system consisted of a GROUND platform, implemented using host-based high-performance SDR platforms, and an agile FLYING platform, implemented using standalone battery-supplied SDR platforms.

Improved spectrum sensing algorithms, previously proposed by members of the research team of the present proposal, and having better performance than other spectrum sensing algorithms from the literature, were used for detecting the RF signals transmitted by the drone.

Angle of arrival (AoA) algorithms were implemented on the SDR platforms to identify the direction of different drones. By means of RF jamming applied simultaneously to both the control and the GPS signals, the drone defense system was able to interrupt the operating capacity of the drone and take control of it by forcing the drone to enter a fixed mode, planar mode, or emergency landing.

To minimize the generated interference and maximize the range of the proposed system, directional antennas, oriented towards the target drones using the information obtained from the AoA algorithms, were used for performing the jamming functions.