# YolovN-CBi: A Lightweight and Efficient Architecture for Real-Time Detection of Small UAVs

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.18046 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.18046/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 19 of its 52 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Dec 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.02531/) (2015)
- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [End-to-End Object Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.12872/) (2020)
- [SSD: Single Shot MultiBox Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.02325/) (2015)
- [CBAM: Convolutional Block Attention Module](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.06521/) (2018)
- [EfficientDet: Scalable and Efficient Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.09070/) (2019)
- [YOLOv7: Trainable bag-of-freebies sets new state-of-the-art for real-time object detectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.02696/) (2022)
- [YOLOv10: Real-Time End-to-End Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14458/) (2024)
- [YOLOv9: Learning What You Want to Learn Using Programmable Gradient Information](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.13616/) (2024)
- [YOLOv11: An Overview of the Key Architectural Enhancements](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.17725/) (2024)
- [R-FCN: Object Detection via Region-based Fully Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.06409/) (2016)
- [YOLOv12: Attention-Centric Real-Time Object Detectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.12524/) (2025)
- [YOLOv6: A Single-Stage Object Detection Framework for Industrial Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.02976/) (2022)
- [Vision-based Anti-UAV Detection and Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.10851/) (2022)
- [Anti-UAV: A Large Multi-Modal Benchmark for UAV Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.08466/) (2021)
- [YOLO Evolution: A Comprehensive Benchmark and Architectural Review of YOLOv12, YOLO11, and Their Previous Versions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.00201/) (2024)
- [Using Deep Networks for Drone Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.05726/) (2017)
- [Centerness-based Instance-aware Knowledge Distillation with Task-wise Mutual Lifting for Object Detection on Drone Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.02861/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [SimD3: A Synthetic drone Dataset with Payload and Bird Distractor Modeling for Robust Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.14742/) (2026)
- [Small Object Detection in Drone Aerial Imagery with LAF-YOLOv10](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.14560/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, commonly known as, drones pose increasing risks in civilian and defense settings, demanding accurate and real-time drone detection systems. However, detecting drones is challenging because of their small size, rapid movement, and low visual contrast. A modified architecture of YolovN called the YolovN-CBi is proposed that incorporates the Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) and the Bidirectional Feature Pyramid Network (BiFPN) to improve sensitivity to small object detections. A curated training dataset consisting of 28K images is created with various flying objects and a local test dataset is collected with 2500 images consisting of very small drone objects. The proposed architecture is evaluated on four benchmark datasets, along with the local test dataset. The baseline Yolov5 and the proposed Yolov5-CBi architecture outperform newer Yolo versions, including Yolov8 and Yolov12, in the speed-accuracy trade-off for small object detection. Four other variants of the proposed CBi architecture are also proposed and evaluated, which vary in the placement and usage of CBAM and BiFPN. These variants are further distilled using knowledge distillation techniques for edge deployment, using a Yolov5m-CBi teacher and a Yolov5n-CBi student. The distilled model achieved a mA@P0.5:0.9 of 0.6573, representing a 6.51% improvement over the teacher's score of 0.6171, highlighting the effectiveness of the distillation process. The distilled model is 82.9% faster than the baseline model, making it more suitable for real-time drone detection. These findings highlight the effectiveness of the proposed CBi architecture, together with the distilled lightweight models in advancing efficient and accurate real-time detection of small UAVs.