Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Rotor-induced micro-Doppler signatures are essential for radar-based characterization of rotary-wing UAVs, but practical echoes are often dominated by a strong quasi-static body return concentrated near zero Doppler. In hovering or low-speed scenarios, rotor-induced components may intermittently overlap this near-zero region, where hard DC suppression discards informative rotor content and fragments micro-Doppler structures. Data-driven decompositions such as EMD and VMD avoid fixed cutoffs, yet without explicit constraints on rotor periodicity they are vulnerable to mode mixing and residual leakage under low-SNR conditions. This paper proposes a Cyclic-Power-Guided Soft Mask (CPGSM) framework that exploits cyclostationary periodicity as a physically grounded prior for rotor-body separation. A CPS-guided soft masking procedure consisting of a DC-dominant overlap band is first identified from quasi-static dominance; within this band, cyclic power spectrum analysis yields a continuous rotor-consistency score that guides smooth time-frequency soft allocation, while deterministic assignment is applied elsewhere. Simulations demonstrate improved micro-Doppler continuity, reduced body leakage, and more stable performance from 5-30 dB SNR compared with hard DC isolation and EMD/VMD, together with consistent rotor-speed estimates across sensing configurations.
Source: Sensors
DOI: 10.3390/s26041382
Authors: Ji’er Wang, Jing Sheng, He Tian, Bo Li
Language: English
Subfield: Aerospace Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,137
OpenAlex ID: W7130934760
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