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RF-YOLO: a modified YOLO model for UAV detection and classification using RF spectrogram images

Author

Listed:
  • Tijeni Delleji

    (Military Research Center
    Digital Research Centre of Sfax)

  • Feten Slimeni

    (Military Research Center)

Abstract

Malicious drones pose significant threats to sensitive sites such as airports, military bases, and nuclear power plants. Accurate detection and classification are required before any neutralization efforts. We address this challenge as a real-time object detection problem, focusing on the radio frequency (RF) signature of the communication signals exchanged between the drone and its remote controller, represented in spectrogram images. We propose a modified version of the You Only Look Once (YOLO) object detection model, RF-YOLO, and evaluate it using a customized dataset of spectrogram images generated from drone remote controller RF signals under various signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) values. Experimental results show that RF-YOLO achieves a mAP of 0.9213, precision of 0.9800, and recall of 0.9750, outperforming YOLOv3, YOLOv5, YOLOv8, RT-DETR, and RetinaNet. RF-YOLO’s mAP is 7.8%, 1.6%, and 4.7% higher than YOLOv8, RT-DETR, and RetinaNet, respectively, while also achieving superior precision and recall, demonstrating its effectiveness in minimizing false positives and maximizing true detections.

Suggested Citation

  • Tijeni Delleji & Feten Slimeni, 2025. "RF-YOLO: a modified YOLO model for UAV detection and classification using RF spectrogram images," Telecommunication Systems: Modelling, Analysis, Design and Management, Springer, vol. 88(1), pages 1-17, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:telsys:v:88:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1007_s11235-025-01264-4
    DOI: 10.1007/s11235-025-01264-4
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