YOLOv8n–CBAM–EfficientNetV2 Model for Aircraft Wake Recognition

In the study of aircraft wake target detection, as the wake evolves and develops, the detection area of the LiDAR often shows the presence of two distinct vortices, one on each side. Sometimes, only a single wake vortex may be present. This can lead to a reduction in the accuracy of wake detection and an increased likelihood of missed detections, which may have a significant impact on the flight safety. Hence, we propose an algorithm based on the YOLOv8n–CBAM–EfficientNetV2 model for wake detection. The algorithm incorporates the lightweight network of EfficientNetV2 and the Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) based on the YOLOv8n model, which achieves the lightweight improvement in the YOLOv8n algorithm and the improvement in detection accuracy. First, this study classifies the wake vortices in the wake greyscale images obtained at Hong Kong International Airport, based on the Range–Height Indicator (RHI) scanning characteristics of the LiDAR and the symmetry of the wake vortex pairs. The classification is used to detect left and right vortices for more accurate wake detection in wind field images, which thereby improves the precision rate of target detection. Subsequently, experiments are conducted using a YOLOv8n–CBAM–EfficientNetV2 model for aircraft wake detection. Finally, the performance of the YOLOv8n–CBAM–EfficientNetV2 model is analysed. The results show that the algorithm proposed in this study can achieve a 96.35% precision rate, 93.58% recall rate, 95.06% F1-score, and 250 frames/s. The results show that the method proposed in this study can be effectively applied in aircraft wake detection.