Aimed at detecting enemy drones, a professor of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) at Jammu has come up with a cost-effective, indigenously developed system called sound-based drone detection technology.
Professor Karan Nathwani attributed his innovation to two drone attacks on June 27, 2021 on Air Force Station in Jammu’s Satwari and subsequent use of the low-flying objects on the borders to push drugs and weapons into Jammu and Kashmir.
On June 27, 2021, India had woken up to a new security challenge when two explosives-laden drones from Pakistan had crashed into the air force station at Jammu airport in the early hours that left two IAF personnel injured.
“It is a hardware prototype for drone detection via exploitation of wavelet scattering and other acoustic features with 1D-convolutional neural network,” he said.
“UAV detection is achieved by inputting the network with unprocessed raw audio waveform, eliminating the need for extracted acoustic features like Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC), mel spectrum, etc. Acoustic-based detection is advantageous, as it operates without requiring a line of sight and remains unaffected by weather conditions or clutter at low altitudes,” he added.
In simple terms, it is a sound-based drone detection system that works on acoustic signature principle. The acoustic technique detects objects on vibrations including resonant frequency and decay time on the LED screens. We use artificial intelligence and a machine learning system,” said Nathwani.
{{/usCountry}}In simple terms, it is a sound-based drone detection system that works on acoustic signature principle. The acoustic technique detects objects on vibrations including resonant frequency and decay time on the LED screens. We use artificial intelligence and a machine learning system,” said Nathwani.
{{/usCountry}}He said that the technology has 98% accuracy and can be relied for detecting enemy drones on the borders.
“We exhibited the technology before the army at NorthTech symposium at IIT and the Northern army chief Lt Gen Upendra Dwivedi had appreciated it. The technology has a range of 300 meters, which can be increased depending upon the requirement,” said the professor.
We have submitted detailed information about the technology to the army and now waiting for their consent. Once approved, we will start deploying it on the borders, he added.