Exploring the rcs of in-flight uavs

This paper presents a first-order statistical analysis of the Radar Cross Section (RCS) of consumer and professionalgrade in-flight drones. The study is based on measurements collected in a rural environment using an X-band Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) radar system during the simultaneous flight of two drones. A detailed description of the experimental setup and data preprocessing, including the RCS estimation procedure is provided. Subsequently, the RCS fluctuations for each drone are characterized by fitting the RCS data to various one- and two-parameter statistical models. The results show that different drones exhibit distinct RCS fluctuation patterns, with each drone conforming to different statistical models, reflecting differences in their size and structural complexity. These findings have significant implications for the development of tailored radar signal processing algorithms aimed at enhancing drone detection and tracking performance.