The invention discloses a life detection device and a detection method carried by an unmanned aerial vehicle, wherein the detection device includes a sky-side detection radar device and a ground-side display control device, and the sky-side detection radar device includes an antenna, a radio frequency module and a baseband processing module; a radio frequency module Including digital frequency synthesizers or phase-locked loops, power amplifiers, circulators, low-noise amplifiers, combiners, mixers, band-pass filters, gain-controlled amplifiers, limiters, analog-to-digital converters, and antennas, digital Frequency synthesizer or phase-locked loop, power amplifier, circulator and antenna constitute the transmission channel; antenna, circulator, low-noise amplifier, combiner, mixer, band-pass filter, gain controllable amplifier, limiter and An analog-to-digital converter forms the receive channel. The detection device of the present invention is small in size and light in weight, and can be mounted on an unmanned aerial vehicle to realize rapid detection of trapped persons in a large area, and has stronger environmental adaptability and applicability.