Keeping Belgium’s Skies Safe: How SkeyDrone Detects Drones Along the Coastline

With 18 drone flights daily, SkeyDrone’s cutting-edge technology aids law enforcement and prepares for the future of European airspace management.

by DRONELIFE Features Editor Jim Magill

The skies above the Belgian coast saw an average of 18 drone flights per day during the months of July and August, according to a recent report released by Belgian drone-detection company SkeyDrone.

SkeyDrone, a joint venture between the air navigation service provider skeyes — which manages all UAS geographic zones in Belgium — and Brussels Airport Company, found that during the study period, the majority of detected flights were carried out with a DJI Mini and the average drone flight lasted three minutes and 55 seconds.

The findings were based on the operation of SkeyDrone’s Drone Detection network, which has proved to be the best performing detection system in the market, said SkeyDrone’s head of sales Didier Decaestecker. Since entering the drone-detection business in the early years of this decade, SkeyDrone has deployed its technology to aid in UAS air traffic management. The technology has also enabled local police agencies to conduct surveillance at several of the large annual European music festivals hosted by Belgium.

“Our Drone Radar software alerts the user of any unauthorized drone entering the area of observation,” Decaestecker said in an email statement. The system uses (RF) identification to detect both cooperative drones, those using Direct Remote ID (DRI), and uncooperative drones.

 SkeyDrone first deployed its drone traffic information system, the SkeyDrone Monitor, in early 2021. The system allows drone operators to detect all crewed aviation in the airspace they want to operate in, even when they are operating in beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) conditions.

“We quickly realized that detecting crewed aviation alone did not secure BVLOS operations as well it should. So, we added drone traffic data based on DRI,” Decaestecker said.

However, since DRI only covers from 10% to 20% of all drones operated in Europe today, SkeyDrone decided to add RF-detection hardware to its system as well. This combination of drone-detection technologies was soon adopted by Belgian law enforcement agencies.

“Local police zones started using our Drone Radar to protect the crowds at large events like Tomorrowland,” he said. “This summer we installed our temporary Drone Detection Service at PukkelPop, Tomorrowland and Lokerse Feesten. SkeyDrone has also installed Drone Detection systems at several international airports.

In Belgium, drone operators can face stiff fines for operating a drone in an unauthorized manner. There have been a number of prosecutions based on evidence provided by SkeyDrone’s drone detection software and its post-flight analytical tool called Drone Analytics, which provides detailed reports on the location of the drone and pilot of past UAV flights.

“I’ve read reports of people being fined up to € 8.000 for flying over a large crowd of people,” Decaestecker said.

He said SkeyDrone is constantly upgrading its drone-detection technology to keep up with attempts by unscrupulous operators to avoid detection.

“Drones are becoming more and more difficult to detect and the number of encrypted drones is on the rise,” he said. “For encrypted drones, we need to triangulate their position, forcing us to multiply the number of drone-detection hardware receivers. This technology is only just beginning to evolve and we are running to keep up.”

In addition to offering drone-detection services, SkeyDrone has also worked to help drone operators obtain regulatory authorizations to execute BVLOS flights in complex environments, such as facilitating drone delivery flights for medical purposes.

“The first BVLOS project we supported was the D-Hive project in the Port of Antwerp,” Decaestecker said. SkeyDrone realized its next BVLOS milestone when it worked with drone delivery service provider ADLC to complete that company’s first BVLOS flight, departing in the Port of Antwerp and landing within the controlled airspace of Antwerp Airport.

Last month, an ADLC drone successfully completed a 4-km (2.5-mile) journey between Residential Care Center De Zon in Bellegem, and General Hospital Groeninge in Kortrijk. This flight was conducted as part of the TETRA project Medical Drone Supplies (MEDROS), led by VIVES University of Applied Sciences in West Flanders, Belgium.

That flight presented some interesting regulatory challenges for the operator, “as it departed in uncontrolled airspace and landed in the proximity of Kortrijk International Airport, which is a radio mandatory zone (RMZ),” Decaestecker said.

He said the company’s work with helping operators secure BVLOS authorizations is an essential element for preparing for future European U-space air traffic regulation. U-Space is a set of services to help UAS operators comply with the relevant rules and enable European Union member states to manage the growth of unmanned traffic.

“These services are an essential part of the future U-Space we are preparing for, but in the meantime these risk mitigations can be applied in a pre-U-Space era too,” Decaestecker said.

Read more:

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Jim Magill is a Houston-based writer with almost a quarter-century of experience covering technical and economic developments in the oil and gas industry. After retiring in December 2019 as a senior editor with S&P Global Platts, Jim began writing about emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robots and drones, and the ways in which they’re contributing to our society. In addition to DroneLife, Jim is a contributor to Forbes.com and his work has appeared in the Houston Chronicle, U.S. News & World Report, and Unmanned Systems, a publication of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.