Abstract
This paper presents an investigation of the electromagnetic signature and the coupling mechanism of quadcopter drones with incident electromagnetic (EM) wave and radar cross section (RCS) analysis. Coupling analysis is performed based on the dominant coupling path: when an incident EM wave with a magnitude of 50 kV/m contacts a commercial quadcopter drone, its motor power wires are identified as the dominant coupling path. Higher coupling voltages are obtained for frequencies that have large impedance values at both ends of the load on the motor power wire. This induced voltage can affect the integrated circuit chip on a printed circuit board, as well as parallel plate resonances. Furthermore, the RCS of a quadcopter drone is measured in the frequency range of 0.5-3 GHz. The internal-component vulnerability characteristics of quadcopters can spike at specific frequencies with high RCS values and can be analyzed with or without motor power wires. We verified these hypotheses via 2D inverse synthetic aperture radar images, and we analyzed the results by comparing the empirical and full-wave simulation values.
Highlights
The potential for high-power electromagnetic (HPEM) field attacks is ever increasing worldwide owing to easy access to high-power electrical sources
We confirmed that the coupling of an EM wave through a quadcopter drone occurs predominantly through the 2-wire power cables connecting the printed circuit boards (PCBs) to the motors
The induced coupling voltage in this paper can be treated as a noise source, which may affect sensitive integrated circuits (ICs) chips on the PCB
Summary
The potential for high-power electromagnetic (HPEM) field attacks is ever increasing worldwide owing to easy access to high-power electrical sources. In this study, a commercial drone was selected as an example system to quantify coupling based on detailed threedimensional (3D) full-wave EM modeling Due to their composition of lightweight non-conductive materials, the radar cross sections (RCSs) of such drones are typically very small. One such study developed a method for improving the quality of images based on the digital signal processing (DSP) of the extracted RCS of a drone, which was measured using an antenna operating at a specific center frequency, such as the X-band [18]. This type of technique relies on the measured RCS values of a drone.
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