Review of research on electromagnetic pulse effect of UAV

The electromagnetic pulse effect of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is a critical issue related to UAV system safety, electromagnetic protection, and counter-UAV applications. With the increasing integration, intelligence, and lightweight design of UAV systems, their onboard data links, navigation receivers, flight control modules, power units, and electronic speed controllers are becoming more vulnerable to strong electromagnetic environments. This paper reviews recent research progress on electromagnetic pulse interference effects in UAV systems from two main aspects: coupling mechanisms and experimental methods. For coupling mechanisms, the characteristics of front-door coupling through antennas, sensors, and receiving channels, as well as back-door coupling through apertures, cables, and structural gaps, are summarized. The sensitive components, failure modes, and threshold characteristics of fixed-wing and multi-rotor UAVs are compared. For experimental methods, injection tests, and radiation tests are discussed, with emphasis on bulk current injection, electromagnetic irradiation, GPS signal forwarding, and component-level effect monitoring under equivalent flight conditions. The limitations of current studies are also analyzed. Future research should focus on dynamic multi-physics coupling, front-door and back-door collaborative modeling, high-frequency and high-field testing, digital-twin-based swarm evaluation, and intelligent prediction of UAV electromagnetic vulnerability.