Effectiveness of Electronic Counter Measures (ECM) on Small Unmanned Aerial Systems (SUAS): Analysis and Preliminary Tests

Abstract

Small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) have become more common and affordable for government, commercial, and private use. There are several counter sUAS products that employ electromagnetic counter measures to disrupt the communications link of sUAS. However, most of these solutions are limited in efficacy to specific sUAS types due to the sophisticated control and communications link technologies utilized by sUAS which make it challenging to effectively jam. To address these challenges, a Drone Detection and Mitigation Radar (DDMR) concept was developed. The jamming component of the DDMR used wideband noise combined with random sweeping of the noise to jam the communications link. This thesis research was predicated by a laboratory experiment which used the DDMR system to successfully jam an sUAS’s communications link. This particular experiment did not (1) provide any theoretical analysis, (2) simulation analysis to determine the effective jamming probabilities, or (3) conduct additional experiments to find the optimal sweeping frequency for the jamming component of the DDMR. This thesis focuses on the optimization of the sweeping noise jamming solution of the communications link by examining the theoretical and simulation analysis as well as the results of further experimental studies. The findings are presented in this thesis paper.