Nerea del Rey Maestre

Nerea del Rey Maestre is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Signal Theory and Communications at the Universidad de Alcalá (UAH), Spain. She holds a PhD in Engineering from UAH (2018), focusing on Design and optimization of robust detection techniques in passive radar applications, supervised by Dr. María del Pilar Jarabo Amores and Dr. Manuel Rosa Zurera.

Her research centers on intelligent passive radar systems, emphasizing clutter modeling, target detection, and surveillance applications. She leads the AES3 research group (Acoustic and Electromagnetic Smart Sensor Networks and Signal Processing), developing technologies for drone detection, ground traffic monitoring, and maritime surveillance using DVB-T/S, GPS, and SAR-based passive radar architectures.

Her work spans signal processing innovations such as neural network-based CFAR detectors, planar antenna arrays, and decentralized radar processing frameworks. Key focus areas include non-coherent spatial integration, motion compensation for high-speed targets, and robust detection in non-homogeneous environments. Experimental validations include real-world scenarios like urban traffic imaging and coastal monitoring with TerraSAR-X and Sentinel-1 data.

Her contributions address challenges in radar clutter characterization, Doppler shift compensation, and passive array optimization using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) antennas. Ongoing projects involve the IDEPAR demonstrator for terrestrial radar surveillance and machine learning techniques for small boat detection in SAR clutter.

Research funding has supported projects like the IDEPAR technological demonstrator and studies on PAZ satellite-based passive radar applications. Collaborations include multi-disciplinary teams tackling sensor network design, signal processing algorithms, and real-world deployment challenges in surveillance systems.