Heathrow Airport Got 5km-Range Drone Detection
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Illegal drone flights are a growing problem for airports, utilities and factories. London Heathrow Airport has recently deployed a new system aimed at preventing drones from entering its airspace and interrupting operations, following a string of recent attempts that threatened Europe’s busiest travel hub. Heathrow’s new detection system is the same one that’s already in use at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle (CDG) Airport.
Heathrow chose a holographic radar system developed by Aveillant, a UK company acquired by Thales SA in 2017. Its technology is now part of the French defense contractor’s anti-drone solution, EagleShield.
The system detects and identifies drones when they enter the airspace. The radar system can detect drones as far as 5km away in all directions. If it detects a drone around the airspace, the airport can then opt to deploy countermeasures. According to bloomberg.com, drone-disabling technology was not part of Thales’ contract with Heathrow.
Holographic radars can be deployed in airports to look over specific high-risk areas such as the approach path, or to cover the entire aerodrome and surrounding area to give early warning of any approaching drone. The Holographic radar will improve safety by reducing the risk of an aircraft hitting a drone, and also reduce the potential for serious operational disruption associated with closing a runway after a pilot sighting of a drone.
The Holographic Radar system differs fundamentally from both traditional mechanically scanned radars and from more advanced electronically scanned systems. Holographic Radar forms multiple simultaneous receive beams that fill the illuminated volume. It requires only a very narrow bandwidth, making it very spectrum efficient compared to traditional radars. By dwelling on targets continuously and for long periods, not only is detection performance against multiple targets excellent but a rich data set containing target specific information enables high discrimination performance. The holographic radar can give reliable alerting with low false alarms to a degree not possible using conventional radar, according to Aveillant’s website.
In March 2019, legislation took effect that prohibits drones from flying within any Flight Restriction Zone, which extends to 5 km (3.1 miles) from U.K. airports. Drone operators who operate their devices within an airport’s perimeter face a prison sentence of up to five years, according to thepointsguy.com.
The introduction of the drone detection technology follows several reports of drones at airports around London, including at Gatwick and Heathrow. In December 2018, Gatwick airport was closed for more than 24 hours around the busy holiday travel season when there were multiple drone sightings near the runway.
