In this paper, we propose a method to detect small unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs) flying in a real-world environment. Small UAV signals are frequently obscured by clutter signals because UAVs usually fly at low altitudes over urban or mountainous terrain. Therefore, to obtain a desirable detection performance, clutter signals must be considered in addition to noise, and thus, a performance analysis of each clutter removal technique is required. The proposed detection process uses clutter

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... and pulse integration methods to suppress clutter and noise signals, and then detects small UAVs by utilizing a constant false alarm rate detector. After applying three clutter removal techniques, we analyzed the performance of each technique in detecting small UAVs. Based on experimental data acquired in a real-world outdoor environment, we found it was possible to derive a clutter removal method suitable for the detection of small UAVs.