Digital twin of multi-model drone detection system on Airsim for RF and vision modalities

Abstract

Drones have become more prevalent in recent years and are used for both beneficial and malicious purposes. As a result, protecting restricted areas from unauthorized drone activities has become crucial. However, some researchers face challenges in developing drone detection systems due to the high costs of necessary equipment. This paper presents an innovative solution by creating an Airsim Graphical User Interface (GUI) tool compatible with the Unreal Engine. This tool enables the simulation of drone flights and creation of image and radio frequency (RF) datasets for drone detection in a simulation environment. Our approach involves modeling the measurement devices such as cameras to capture image data and software defined radio (SDR) receiver to capture RF signals as raw in-phase and quadrature (IQ) data. Moreover, users can manage automated route planning for drones, recording configurations, and different cameras and RF configurations. Researchers can now generate datasets with various images and RF configurations without the need for physical drones, cameras, or SDRs, enabling experimentation with different drone detection models. Furthermore, we proposed models for drone detection systems by using generated datasets from the proposed dataset generation system.