Controller-Only False Confirmation in Passive RF UAV Link Detection
SDR study finds counter-UAV RF detectors falsely confirm 50% of controller-only UAV scans, dropping to 5% under constrained training at accuracy cost.
Researchers used dual-band USRP B210 SDRs scanning eight 2.4 GHz and twelve 5.8 GHz windows across three commercial UAVs (DJI Phantom 3 4K, Hubsan H501S, DJI Mavic Mini). An energy-based detector achieved 0.992 balanced accuracy distinguishing linked UAVs from ambient noise yet false-confirmed 30 of 60 controller-only scans (FCRctrl = 0.500). Training with controller-only scans under an explicit FCR constraint reduced false confirmations from 0.350 to 0.050, but confirm-linked TPR fell from 0.900 to 0.400 and 42.1% of scans were deferred. The authors argue controller-only false confirmation must be reported separately from linked-versus-background accuracy.
- Energy detector false-confirmed 50% of controller-only scans despite 0.992 linked accuracy
- FCR-constrained training cut false confirmations from 0.350 to 0.050; TPR dropped to 0.400
- Hardware-in-loop scan reduced wall-clock time from 82.9 s to 28.9 s
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Passive radio frequency (RF) sensing is widely used for counter-unmanned-aerial-vehicle (counter-UAV) detection. Existing studies commonly report high accuracy against background RF or WiFi/Bluetooth interference, but rarely isolate controller-only operation without a linked aircraft. We present a dual-band software-defined radio (SDR) measurement study with ambient, controller-only, and linked states for three commercial UAV platforms (DJI Phantom 3 4K, Hubsan H501S, DJI Mavic Mini). Two USRP B210 receivers simultaneously scan eight 2.4 GHz and twelve 5.8 GHz observation windows across twenty rounds. We first train an energy-based detector using linked and ambient scans only. At four ranked concurrent dwell steps (8 s), it achieves 0.992 linked-versus-ambient balanced accuracy but false-confirms 30 out of 60 controller-only scans (FCRctrl = 0.500). We then include controller-only scans in training and use confirm, reject, and defer outputs under an explicit controller-only false-confirmation-rate (FCR) constraint. For the pooled all-platform analysis, the constraint reduces observed FCRctrl from 0.350 to 0.050, while confirm-linked TPR decreases from 0.900 to 0.400 and 42.1% of scans are deferred. The corresponding compact scan performs substantially better for Hubsan and Mavic than for Phantom. A hardware-in-loop experiment reduces measured wall-clock time from 82.9 s to 28.9 s. These measurements show that linked-versus-background accuracy does not measure controller-only false confirmation and that this error should be reported separately.
Text extracted automatically; images, tables and formatting may be missing. Original: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.25294