Development of RF-Photonic System for Automatic Targets’ Nonlinear Rotational/Flapping/Gliding Signatures Imaging Applications

Abstract

Nowadays, developing the radio frequency (RF)-photonic sensors suitable for several Defence and civil applications is emerging due to its various unique advantages. In today’s scientific world, the involvement of low radar cross-section (RCS) airspace targets, such as unman aerial vehicles, drones, mini-helicopters, ornithopters, bionic birds, etc., is more for the purpose of airspace traffic management/guidance, materials delivery, legal/illegal surveillance and Defence/offense applications. The detection and recognition of such targets using the conventional RF sensors (which process only the main Doppler) is almost impossible. Therefore, extracting the distinctive micro-Doppler (m-D) signatures of these low-RCS targets and using them to image/differentiate/recognize their postures become significant which is the main contribution in this paper. A C-band continuous wave RF-photonic sensor is developed and different low-RCS targets: 2/3 blades rotating propeller system (drones), cone like structure (warhead) and a bionic-bird (spy-bird); are operated in front of it. The different nonlinear postures, of these targets, covered in our experimental measurements are m-D extraction of a slowly moving propeller system, detection of back-and-forth movements of a rotational propeller system, discerning the moving and static rotational propeller systems, simultaneous extraction of m-D signatures of a rotational and moving targets and recognition of flapping/gliding motions of bionic-bird. The analysis and recognition of all these postures using the experimentally generated m-D signatures are described.