A New Approach to Classify Drones Using a Deep Convolutional Neural Network

In recent years, the widespread adaptation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, among the public has led to significant security concerns, prompting intense research into drones’ classification methodologies. The swift and accurate classification of drones poses a considerable challenge due to their diminutive size and rapid movements. To address this challenge, this paper introduces (i) a novel drone classification approach utilizing deep convolution and deep transfer learning techniques. The model incorporates bypass connections and Leaky ReLU activation functions to mitigate the ‘vanishing gradient problem’ and the ‘dying ReLU problem’, respectively, associated with deep networks and is trained on a diverse dataset. This study employs (ii) a custom dataset comprising both audio and visual data of drones as well as analogous objects like an airplane, birds, a helicopter, etc., to enhance classification accuracy. The integration of audio–visual information facilitates more precise drone classification. Furthermore, (iii) a new Finite Impulse Response (FIR) low-pass filter is proposed to convert audio signals into spectrogram images, reducing susceptibility to noise and interference. The proposed model signifies a transformative advancement in convolutional neural networks’ design, illustrating the compatibility of efficacy and efficiency without compromising on complexity and learnable properties. A notable performance was demonstrated by the proposed model, with an accuracy of 100% achieved on the test images using only four million learnable parameters. In contrast, the Resnet50 and Inception-V3 models exhibit 90% accuracy each on the same test set, despite the employment of 23.50 million and 21.80 million learnable parameters, respectively.