An appetite for drones

March 30, 2023

Rebecca Spayne, Managing Editor, Security Buyer presents an overview of the different types of counter drone technology, and the growth in appetite for the proper use of drones in security, defence and police

As technology continues to evolve and grow, we can only expect new and creative ways for criminals to gain data or access to prohibited sites, borders or crossings. This is where we have seen the adoption of drones increase over the last decade when it comes to the illegal use of the technology. This feature will first analyse the types of security and military technology available to deter and detect the unlawful use of drones, and then look at how the defence, police and private security sectors are using drones to their advantage.

Detecting drones

Drone Monitoring Equipment can be passive (simply looking or listening) or active (sending a signal out and analysing what comes back) and can perform several functions, including:

Detection
Classification or Identification
Locating and Tracking
Alerting

You should be aware that not all equipment performs all the above functionality at the same time. Detection means the technology can detect drones. Detection alone usually isn’t enough though. A radar that detects drones may also detect birds, for example.

That’s why classification is useful. Technology that classifies drones will usually be able to separate drones from other types of objects – like planes, trains, and automobiles, for example. One step further is identification. Some equipment can identify a particular model of drone, or even identify the drone’s or controller’s digital fingerprint, like a MAC address for example. This level of identification can be handy for prosecution purposes.

Being alerted that a drone is present somewhere in the vicinity is already useful. But your situational awareness, and ability to deploy countermeasures is greatly enhanced if you know the drone’s (and/or the controller’s) exact location. Some equipment will even allow you to track the drone location in real-time.

There are four main drone detection technologies:

Radio Frequency (RF) Analysers

RF Analysers consist of one or more antennas to receive radio waves and a processor to analyse the RF spectrum. They’re used to try to detect radio communication between a drone and its controller.

Some systems can identify the more common drone makes and models, and some can even identify the MAC addresses of the drone and controller (if the drone uses Wi-Fi for communication). This is especially useful for prosecution purposes – proving that a particular drone and controller were active.

Dedrone for example, states that, “almost all freely available drones use radio signals. On the one hand, they receive commands from the remote control, on the other hand they send data such as video images or telemetry, e.g. position or remaining battery power, to the remote control.”

Acoustic Sensors

Acoustic sensors are usually described as a microphone, or microphone array (lots of microphones), which detects the sound made by a drone and calculates a direction. More sets of microphone arrays can be used for rough triangulation.

Optical Sensors

Essentially optical sensors are video cameras. As well as standard daylight cameras, optical sensors can be infrared or thermal imaging.

Radar

Radar is a device that uses radio energy to detect an object. Drone detection radar sends out a signal and receives the reflection, measuring direction and distance (position)…

Read the rest of this exclusive feature, and more, in our latest issue here.