
CLC number: TP391
On-line Access: 2026-01-09
Received: 2025-07-22
Revision Accepted: 2025-10-31
Crosschecked: 2026-01-11
Cited: 0
Clicked: 360
Bin ZHOU, Weiming WANG, Ning YAN, Linlin ZHAO, Chuanzhen LI. Integrating the cat’s eye effect and deep learning for low-altitude target detection[J]. Frontiers of Information Technology & Electronic Engineering, 2025, 26(12): 2455-2469.
@article{title="Integrating the cat’s eye effect and deep learning for low-altitude target detection",
author="Bin ZHOU, Weiming WANG, Ning YAN, Linlin ZHAO, Chuanzhen LI",
journal="Frontiers of Information Technology & Electronic Engineering",
volume="26",
number="12",
pages="2455-2469",
year="2025",
publisher="Zhejiang University Press & Springer",
doi="10.1631/FITEE.2500522"
}
%0 Journal Article
%T Integrating the cat’s eye effect and deep learning for low-altitude target detection
%A Bin ZHOU
%A Weiming WANG
%A Ning YAN
%A Linlin ZHAO
%A Chuanzhen LI
%J Frontiers of Information Technology & Electronic Engineering
%V 26
%N 12
%P 2455-2469
%@ 2095-9184
%D 2025
%I Zhejiang University Press & Springer
%DOI 10.1631/FITEE.2500522
TY - JOUR
T1 - Integrating the cat’s eye effect and deep learning for low-altitude target detection
A1 - Bin ZHOU
A1 - Weiming WANG
A1 - Ning YAN
A1 - Linlin ZHAO
A1 - Chuanzhen LI
J0 - Frontiers of Information Technology & Electronic Engineering
VL - 26
IS - 12
SP - 2455
EP - 2469
%@ 2095-9184
Y1 - 2025
PB - Zhejiang University Press & Springer
ER -
DOI - 10.1631/FITEE.2500522
Abstract: This paper addresses the urgent need to detect low, slow, and small (LSS) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in complex and critical environments, proposing an active low-altitude target detection method based on the cat’;s eye effect. The detection system incorporates a control module, a laser emission component, a co-optical path panoramic scanning optical mechanism structure, an echo reception component, target detection, and visualization processing to achieve small target detection. The light source is emitted by a near-infrared laser, and the scanning optical path is realized using micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) mirrors and servo mechanisms. The echo reception signal is received by an avalanche photodiode (APD) and the target detection module, which captures the reflected signal and distance information. The detection software integrates the local pyramid attention (LPA) module and the field pyramid network (FPN) through the UAV micro lens identification algorithm. It eliminates false alarms by incorporating SKNet21 and uses the APD to collect echo intensity and flight time, thereby reducing the false alarm rate. The results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed target detection method, which achieves a mean average precision of 0.809 at an intersection over union (IoU) of 0.50, a mean average precision of 0.324 at an IoU of 0.50–0.95, and a throughput of 49.8 Giga floating-point operations per second (GFLOPs), indicating that it can address the current limitations in LSS target detection.
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