Electromagnetic Signature of a Quadcopter Drone and Its Relationship With Coupling Mechanisms

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.