Ukraine Develops FENEK Acoustic Drone Detection System

Ukraine has unveiled a new acoustic drone detection system ‘FENEK’ designed to support mobile AA fire teams and enhance the protection of critical infrastructure.

In an interview with Militarnyi, a representative of the manufacturing company shared details about the system.

FENEK operates through a network of microphones equipped with advanced sound-filtering algorithms. By analyzing acoustic signatures, the system can triangulate the position of incoming drones – accurately determining both their distance and altitude.

“We calculate both vertical and horizontal angles. Here we have a map, and on it, we can currently see the azimuth of the loudest sound detected, because our filtering system is currently turned off,” the company representative explains.

In the simplest setup – for example, to equip a mobile fire team – a single microphone mounted on a mast is sufficient to determine the azimuth of a target.

A single microphone can determine the azimuth with an accuracy of up to 2 degrees, which, as the developer notes, is “a pretty decent result for sound-based detection.”

For facility protection, the installation of three or more units is required as it allows the system to determine the precise coordinates of a target. Additionally, the system supports two types of triangulation: dynamic and impulse-based. The former enables tracking of a continuously moving sound source, while the latter captures a single loud acoustic event, such as an explosion or gunshot.

In addition, the development team is working on bringing the system in line with NATO standards to unify data exchange formats between different systems. This will significantly simplify the future integration of the FENEK system with other solutions.

The team is also working on creating a database of acoustic signatures collected from devices already in use, in order to add a feature for precise target classification.

It’s worth noting that Ukraine already has at least two acoustic systems currently used to detect Russian drones – Zvook and Sky Fortress.

Much more is known about the Zvook system than about the second counterpart. Zvook is a hardware-software complex capable of acoustically detecting cruise missiles, helicopters, drones, and fighter jets at low and medium altitudes.

The system consists of a network of microphones distributed across Ukrainian territory. These microphones record ambient sounds, which are then processed by specialized software. The software analyzes the signals and identifies matches with the acoustic signatures of cruise missiles, aircraft, and drones.

The system can detect a drone at a distance of up to 5 kilometers, and a cruise missile – of up to 7 kilometers.