The Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) is deployed along the Indo-China border, characterized by high-altitude mountainous terrain, remote and sparsely populated regions, and extreme environmental conditions.
Sub-zero temperatures, low atmospheric pressure, and high wind speeds significantly degrade the performance of both human operators and electronic equipment compared to plains and semi-plains.
These regions are highly vulnerable to enemy drone intrusions, necessitating an effective counter-drone solution capable of early detection and soft-kill neutralization (jamming and spoofing).
The objective is to establish a protective electronic umbrella within a safe operational radius to detect, track, and neutralize hostile drones.
An anti-drone system is required with portable detection, jamming, and spoofing modules, capable of countering single and swarm drone threats approaching simultaneously from multiple directions.
- RF Detector (Wideband Scanner) for drone detection
- RF and Satellite Navigation Jamming System
- Optional Drone Spoofing / Takeover Capability
- Micro & Small Drones: 5 km or better
- Medium Drones: 10 km or better
- Omni-directional: ≥ 3 km
- Directional: ≥ 4 km
- Omni-directional: ≥ 20 km
- Directional: ≥ 40 km
This project was developed as part of the Smart India Hackathon (SIH), focusing on defence and national security applications.
The aim was to design and demonstrate a feasible, modular, and scalable counter-drone architecture, emphasizing concept validation and system integration rather than full-scale deployment.
This system is a Proof of Concept (PoC) implementation of the above problem statement.
- Demonstrates core principles of detection, jamming, and spoofing
- Validates feasibility at prototype and simulation level
- Does not claim to achieve operational field ranges mentioned in the problem statement
- Designed for academic, research, and controlled testing environments
The Anti-Drone System is designed as a modular architecture, allowing independent development and evaluation of each subsystem.
Drone detection is performed using Software Defined Radio (SDR) techniques with HackRF, focusing on identifying RF activity associated with drone communication and control links.
This module serves as a detection PoC.
Detailed implementation and enhancements are maintained by the contributors working specifically on detection.
📂 Module directory: detection/
The jamming module explores soft-kill techniques to disrupt drone control and navigation links by transmitting interference signals on targeted frequency bands.
➡️ Read detailed documentation:
🔗 Jamming Module README
The spoofing module demonstrates a prototype GNSS spoofing mechanism using ESP32 microcontrollers, highlighting vulnerabilities in unauthenticated navigation systems by transmitting false but valid-looking coordinate data.
➡️ Read detailed documentation:
🔗 Spoofing Module README
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Threat Understanding
Studied drone communication, navigation methods, and vulnerabilities relevant to border surveillance scenarios. -
Modular Design
Split the system into detection, jamming, and spoofing modules for independent development and testing. -
Soft-Kill Focus
Prioritized non-kinetic neutralization methods (jamming & spoofing) suitable for sensitive and remote environments. -
Prototype Validation
Implemented PoC-level demonstrations using SDRs and microcontrollers to validate concepts. -
Scalability Consideration
Designed architecture such that higher-power RF front-ends and directional systems can be integrated in future iterations.
anti-drone-system/
├── README.md
├── detection/
├── jamming/
│ └── README.md
├── spoofing/
│ └── README.md