All Case Studies
DEFENSE Counter-UAS Sensor Fusion Embedded

Vehicle-Mounted VIP Protection

Acoustic-first drone detection for a protection vehicle that never stops moving.

Acoustic arrays, DSP, radar, EO/IR, sensor fusion, GNSS/IMU
Core Tech
Problem

Counter-drone systems are built for fixed sites. On a protection vehicle every assumption breaks: engine, wind and road noise mask the rotor signature, the platform changes heading constantly, and an autonomous drone emits no radio link to intercept. A system that only works parked protects nobody on the move.

Objective

Detect, classify and track drone-like threats around a moving security formation with full 360-degree coverage, and hand the crew one fused target picture instead of a set of separate sensor alarms — stationary or in motion.

System Architecture

Hardware

  • Five distributed microphone-array nodes
  • synchronized sampling
  • bearing estimation
  • graceful degradation if a node drops

Hardware

  • Time-frequency processing separating rotor signatures from vehicle
  • road and wind noise
  • with confidence and quality scoring

Hardware

  • Short-range radar cued to the acoustic sector
  • contributing range
  • radial speed
  • trajectory and time-to-arrival

Hardware

  • One or two stabilized PTZ or EO/IR units slewing to the acoustic bearing for day and night confirmation

Hardware

  • Time
  • bearing
  • range
  • motion and optical observations correlated into one persistent target ID and one combined confidence score

Hardware

  • GNSS and IMU reference converting acoustic bearings into a stable geographic frame
Technical Stack
Microphone arrays Real-time DSP Short-range radar EO/IR and PTZ GNSS IMU Sensor fusion Embedded Linux
Results

A vehicle-mounted platform in which acoustics open every threat event and radar and optics verify it. Five synchronized sensing nodes hold 360-degree coverage, four or more tracks are managed in parallel, and the design objective from detection to first alert is two seconds. Bearings are converted into a stable geographic frame by GNSS and IMU, so turns, vibration and road movement do not corrupt the picture.

360u00b0
Acoustic coverage
5
Synchronized nodes
4+
Parallel threat tracks
2
Optical units cued
u22642s
Detection to first alert

Protection that moves with the principal

Fixed-site counter-drone installations protect a location. A protection detail protects a person, and that person is usually in a vehicle. This system is built for executive protection vehicles, official convoys, arrival and departure zones, temporary secure areas and mobile command operations — and it keeps detecting, prioritising and recording whether the vehicle is stationary or driving.

Acoustics lead, everything else verifies

The acoustic subsystem is the primary detector, and it is passive: it transmits nothing, so an adversary never learns they have been spotted. Radar and optics are cued by it rather than scanning independently. Radar examines the sector the acoustics indicated and contributes range, radial velocity and time-to-arrival. The optical units slew to the same bearing, scan the uncertainty cone, confirm the target and hold it in view.

The operator does not see three systems arguing. Every observation is associated with one persistent target identity and one combined confidence score.

Why a moving platform is the hard version

Three problems arrive together. The vehicle generates the noise that masks the signal. The vehicle’s heading changes, so a bearing means nothing without a reference frame. And an autonomous drone offers no RF link to detect or jam. The answer to the first two is synchronised arrays plus GNSS and IMU fusion that converts every bearing into geographic truth. The answer to the third is not relying on RF at all.

One operating principle

A threat event exists only once the acoustic engine has produced a valid bearing with acceptable confidence and signal quality. That acoustic timestamp becomes the event reference, the acoustic bearing defines the first search sector, and repeated detections maintain track continuity. Every event preserves its own evidence trail.

Xilinx RFSoC based SDR Yocto based system