Robust drone detection in adverse weather using YOLOv11 with synthetic rain augmentation

Gunawan, Teddy Surya and Mazlan, Muhammad Harith Aiman and Kartiwi, Mira and Md Yusoff, Nelidya (2025) Robust drone detection in adverse weather using YOLOv11 with synthetic rain augmentation. In: 11th IEEE International Conference on Smart Instrumentation, Measurement and Applications, ICSIMA 2025, 10-11 September 2025, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

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Abstract

This paper investigates the performance of YOLOv11 models for drone detection under adverse weather simulated via synthetic rain at five intensity levels. Five YOLOv11 variants, n, s, m, l, and x, were fine-tuned using rain-augmented datasets. Results show a consistent degradation in accuracy with increasing rain intensity. Among the models, YOLOv11m achieved the best trade-off, maintaining mAP@0.5 above 0.92 and F1-scores above 0.88 under clear to moderate rain. Fine-tuning significantly improved recall and fitness scores compared to baseline performance. A representative confusion matrix yielded 310 true positives, 59 false negatives, and 37 false positives, illustrating the inherent precision–recall trade-off under visual degradation. Compared to earlier YOLO versions, YOLOv11 demonstrated improved resilience to synthetic rain effects such as occlusion and blur. However, performance dropped sharply under heavy rain conditions. These findings support the application of rain-augmented fine-tuning for robust drone detection. Future work includes sensor fusion and real-world weather validation.

Item Type:	Proceeding Paper (Invited Papers)
Additional Information:	I am the first author (IIUM). External collaboration with UTM. https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105026944127
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Drone Detection, YOLOv11, Synthetic Rain Augmentation, Adverse Weather Conditions, Object Detection
Subjects:	T Technology > TK Electrical engineering. Electronics Nuclear engineering > TK7800 Electronics. Computer engineering. Computer hardware. Photoelectronic devices > TK7885 Computer engineering
Kulliyyahs/Centres/Divisions/Institutes (Can select more than one option. Press CONTROL button):	Kulliyyah of Engineering > Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Kulliyyah of Information and Communication Technology > Department of Information System Kulliyyah of Information and Communication Technology > Department of Information System Kulliyyah of Engineering Kulliyyah of Information and Communication Technology Kulliyyah of Information and Communication Technology
Depositing User:	Prof. Dr. Teddy Surya Gunawan
Date Deposited:	28 Jan 2026 12:16
Last Modified:	28 Jan 2026 12:16
Queue Number:	2026-01-Q1868
URI:	http://irep.iium.edu.my/id/eprint/127112

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