Tracking swarms of unmanned aerial systems

Easthope, Paul F.; Collinson, Alan

Tracking swarms of unmanned aerial systems

Abstract

The proliferation of cheap Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) poses some significant challenges for the Ground Based Air Defence (GBAD) environment. Individual UAS are inherently difficult to detect, track, classify and identify, but the challenges are exacerbated if UAS are deployed in swarms. It can be appreciated that small physical size, combined with the extensive use of non-metallic materials, will render an individual UAS difficult to detect from a radar’s perspective. If such targets are deployed in a group, then the radar response is likely to consist of intermittent, uncorrelated observations on random subsets of the swarm as a whole, with no guarantee that observations made on individual constituent UAS will be consistent from scan to scan. This paper describes a tracking filter model that is able to simultaneously track the swarm centroid and the spatial dispersion of constituent UAS, without requiring any pre-processing of radar returns into clusters. Although this paper is primarily concerned with UAS, the authors are aware that other types of platform may usefully be employed in swarms, for example satellites, and that some large and complex unitary systems may present swarm-like characteristics to sensors. The principles discussed here may also be applicable in these other cases.

W artykule zamieszczono równania określające oczekiwane liczby linii przechodzących przez k punktów, zdefiniowanych jako wąskie prostokątne obszary o zadanych wymiarach, które można znaleźć w szerszym kwadratowym obszarze zawierające punkty rozmieszczone z rozkładem normalnym. Zamieszczono wyniki symulacyjne, stanowiące podstawę do oceny prawdopodobieństwa tego, że liniowe serie pomiarów w środowisku zakłóconym mają charakter losowy.