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Incremental Learning-Based Open-Set Classification of Unknown UAVs via RF Signal Semantics
KTH, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), Communication Systems.
KTH, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), Communication Systems.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-5298-7490
KTH, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), Communication Systems.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-0525-4491
KTH, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), Communication Systems. Aalborg University, Department of Electronic Systems, Denmark.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-8517-7996
2026 (English)In: 2026 IEEE International Conference on Communications Workshops, ICC Workshops 2026 - Proceedings, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) , 2026Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

The proliferation of civilian and commercial unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has heightened the demand for reliable radio frequency (RF)-based drone identification systems that can operate under dynamic and uncertain airspace conditions. Most existing RF-based recognition methods adopt a closed-set assumption, where all UAV types are known during training. Such an assumption becomes unrealistic in practical deployments, as new or unknown UAVs frequently emerge, leading to overconfident misclassifications and inefficient retraining cycles. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a unified incremental open-set learning framework for RF-based UAV recognition that enables both novel class discovery and incremental adaptation. The framework first performs open-set recognition to separate unknown signals from known classes in the semantic feature space, followed by an unsupervised clustering module that discovers new UAV categories by selecting between K-Means and Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM) based on composite validity scores. Subsequently, a lightweight incremental learning module integrates the newly discovered classes through a memory-bounded replay mechanism that mitigates catastrophic forgetting. Experiments on a real-world UAV RF dataset comprising 24 classes (18 known and 6 unknown) show effective open-set detection, promising clustering performance under the evaluated noise settings, and stable incremental adaptation with minimal storage cost, supporting the potential of the proposed framework for open-world UAV recognition.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) , 2026.
Keywords [en]
Drone Detection, Incremental Learning, Machine Learning, Open-Set Recognition, Radio Frequency Signals
National Category
Computer Sciences Computer graphics and computer vision Control Engineering
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-386997DOI: 10.1109/ICCWorkshops63917.2026.11586670Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-105045581140OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kth-386997DiVA, id: diva2:2091834
Conference
2026 IEEE International Conference on Communications Workshops, ICC Workshops 2026, Glasgow, United Kingdom, May 24-28 2026
Note

Part of ISBN 979-8-3315-7624-0

QC 20260813

Available from: 2026-08-13 Created: 2026-08-13 Last updated: 2026-08-13Bibliographically approved

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