IEEE - Aerospace and Electronic Systems - March 2021 - 1

DOI. No. 10.1109/MAES.2021.3059062

Welcome to IEEE AESS Tutorial XIV

We are pleased to offer the fourteenth issue of our tutorials, Tutorial XIV to members of the IEEE. Three kinds of
tutorial articles are offered. The first is a primer on an
established topic, while the second introduces us to a topic
of emerging importance. The third type of article is a survey of an established technical area. In all three cases,
authors are for the most part noted experts willing to share
their knowledge and experience in a written field guide.
Tutorial XIV presents two tutorials on emerging topics
while the third tutorial provides a survey of an established
technical area.
The first article, " Countering Unmanned Aircraft Systems (C-UAS): State of the Art, Challenges, and Future
Trends " addresses the popular topic of unmanned aircraft
systems and focuses on C-UAS. An UAS is an unmanned
aircraft that is operated without the possibility of human
intervention from within or on the aircraft and associated
elements (including communication links and the components that control the unmanned aircraft) that are required
for the operator to operate safely and efficiently in the airspace system. To promote safe, secure, and privacyrespecting UAS, an urgent need exists for innovative technologies for detecting, tracking, identifying, and mitigating UAS. A counter-UAS (C-UAS) system is defined as a
system or device capable of lawfully and safely disabling,
disrupting, or seizing control of an unmanned aircraft. In
this article, the authors provide a comprehensive survey of
existing literature in the area of UAS detection and negation, identify the challenges in countering adversary UAS,
and evaluate the trends of detection and negation for protecting against UAS-based threats. The objective of this
tutorial is to present a systematic introduction of C-UAS,
thus fostering a research community to the safe integration
of UAS into the airspace system.
The second article is entitled " An Introduction to Practical Quantum Key Distribution, " and coauthored by Omar
Amer and Walter O Krewec of the University of Connecticut and Vaibhav Garg of Comcast Cable. Currently the
security of much of our communication infrastructure
depends entirely on certain computational assumptions.
As a single example, consider SSL/TLS the protocol used

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MARCH 2021

whenever one visits an https site. The secure communication protocol utilizes several classical public key cryptographic primitives as building blocks to establish a private
channel between two end users. However, it is a mathematical fact that the security of any classical key distribution system (either those in use now, or those which have
yet to be developed) must, by necessity, rely on assumed
limits on an adversary's power (e.g., one must assume certain problems are difficult to solve computationally).
Should these assumptions prove false, our ability to communicate securely using these protocols and systems will
come to a sudden end. Not only this, but secrets which
were protected using these systems may no longer remain
secure and would be open to attack. Finally, even if these
computational assumptions remain true, the advent of
quantum computers may lead to breaks or inefficient constructions. It is difficult to say for certain when quantum
computers, on a scale large enough to harm our currentday secure communication systems, will appear. However,
if their appearance comes suddenly, organizations will
have little time to adapt to their creation. Unlike classical
key distribution systems, quantum key distribution (QKD)
protocols allow for the establishment of a secret classical
key, secure against computationally unbounded adversaries; that is, security is proven in terms of adversaries limited only by the laws of physics, rather than the
assumption a mathematical problem is difficult to solve.
This is in strict contrast to classical key distribution protocols, where it is proven that security always requires some
computational limitation be placed on the power. This survey analyzes QKD technology, both in theory and in practice. Unlike other surveys of QKD, the focus is primarily
on giving a high-level overview of quantum communication for readers not familiar with quantum or information
theory. Also practical applications of QKD technology are
addressed.
The third article is entitled " Automatic Target Recognition on Synthetic Aperture Radar Imagery: A Survey "
coauthored by O. Kechagias-Stamatis and N. Aouf, who
are with the City University of London. Automatic Target
Recognition (ATR) for military applications is one of the
core processes toward enhancing intelligence and autonomously operating military platforms. Spurred by this and
given that synthetic aperture radar (SAR) presents several
advantages over its counterpart data domains, this article

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IEEE - Aerospace and Electronic Systems - March 2021

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