Drone Carry-on Weight and Wind Flow Assessment via Micro-Doppler Analysis

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Vovchuk, Dmytro, Torgovitsky, Oleg, Khobzei, Mykola, Tkach, Vladyslav, Geyman, Sergey, Kharchevskii, Anton, Sheleg, Andrey, Salgals, Toms, Bobrovs, Vjaceslavs, Gizach, Shai, Glam, Aviel, Mizrahi, Niv Haim, Liberzon, Alexander, Ginzburg, Pavel
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Vovchuk, Dmytro
Torgovitsky, Oleg
Khobzei, Mykola
Tkach, Vladyslav
Geyman, Sergey
Kharchevskii, Anton
Sheleg, Andrey
Salgals, Toms
Bobrovs, Vjaceslavs
Gizach, Shai
Glam, Aviel
Mizrahi, Niv Haim
Liberzon, Alexander
Ginzburg, Pavel
author_facet Vovchuk, Dmytro
Torgovitsky, Oleg
Khobzei, Mykola
Tkach, Vladyslav
Geyman, Sergey
Kharchevskii, Anton
Sheleg, Andrey
Salgals, Toms
Bobrovs, Vjaceslavs
Gizach, Shai
Glam, Aviel
Mizrahi, Niv Haim
Liberzon, Alexander
Ginzburg, Pavel
contents Remote monitoring of drones has become a global objective due to emerging applications in national security and managing aerial delivery traffic. Despite their relatively small size, drones can carry significant payloads, which require monitoring, especially in cases of unauthorized transportation of dangerous goods. A drone's flight dynamics heavily depend on outdoor wind conditions and the carry-on weight, which affect the tilt angle of a drone's body and the rotation velocity of the blades. A surveillance radar can capture both effects, provided a sufficient signal-to-noise ratio for the received echoes and an adjusted postprocessing detection algorithm. Here, we conduct a systematic study to demonstrate that micro-Doppler analysis enables the disentanglement of the impacts of wind and weight on a hovering drone. The physics behind the effect is related to the flight controller, as the way the drone counteracts weight and wind differs. When the payload is balanced, it imposes an additional load symmetrically on all four rotors, causing them to rotate faster, thereby generating a blade-related micro-Doppler shift at a higher frequency. However, the impact of the wind is different. The wind attempts to displace the drone, and to counteract this, the drone tilts to the side. As a result, the forward and rear rotors rotate at different velocities to maintain the tilt angle of the drone body relative to the airflow direction. This causes the splitting in the micro-Doppler spectra. By performing a set of experiments in a controlled environment, specifically, an anechoic chamber for electromagnetic isolation and a wind tunnel for imposing deterministic wind conditions, we demonstrate that both wind and payload details can be extracted using a simple deterministic algorithm based on branching in the micro-Doppler spectra.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_22846
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Drone Carry-on Weight and Wind Flow Assessment via Micro-Doppler Analysis
Vovchuk, Dmytro
Torgovitsky, Oleg
Khobzei, Mykola
Tkach, Vladyslav
Geyman, Sergey
Kharchevskii, Anton
Sheleg, Andrey
Salgals, Toms
Bobrovs, Vjaceslavs
Gizach, Shai
Glam, Aviel
Mizrahi, Niv Haim
Liberzon, Alexander
Ginzburg, Pavel
Applied Physics
Robotics
Remote monitoring of drones has become a global objective due to emerging applications in national security and managing aerial delivery traffic. Despite their relatively small size, drones can carry significant payloads, which require monitoring, especially in cases of unauthorized transportation of dangerous goods. A drone's flight dynamics heavily depend on outdoor wind conditions and the carry-on weight, which affect the tilt angle of a drone's body and the rotation velocity of the blades. A surveillance radar can capture both effects, provided a sufficient signal-to-noise ratio for the received echoes and an adjusted postprocessing detection algorithm. Here, we conduct a systematic study to demonstrate that micro-Doppler analysis enables the disentanglement of the impacts of wind and weight on a hovering drone. The physics behind the effect is related to the flight controller, as the way the drone counteracts weight and wind differs. When the payload is balanced, it imposes an additional load symmetrically on all four rotors, causing them to rotate faster, thereby generating a blade-related micro-Doppler shift at a higher frequency. However, the impact of the wind is different. The wind attempts to displace the drone, and to counteract this, the drone tilts to the side. As a result, the forward and rear rotors rotate at different velocities to maintain the tilt angle of the drone body relative to the airflow direction. This causes the splitting in the micro-Doppler spectra. By performing a set of experiments in a controlled environment, specifically, an anechoic chamber for electromagnetic isolation and a wind tunnel for imposing deterministic wind conditions, we demonstrate that both wind and payload details can be extracted using a simple deterministic algorithm based on branching in the micro-Doppler spectra.
title Drone Carry-on Weight and Wind Flow Assessment via Micro-Doppler Analysis
topic Applied Physics
Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.22846