A custom lightweight UAV for radar remote sensing: Concept design, properties and possible applications

In this paper, we introduce a novel, tailor-made UAV-based sensor platform for radar remote sensing. It is controlled by a redundantly implemented, customized flight control and equipped with a comprehensive embedded system for radar baseband processing. Both systems are synchronized with a common, low-phase noise and temperature-stable reference clock, which allows coherent acquisition and continuous recording of sensor data. A commercial differential GPS system is used for positioning. The platform potentially allows interferometric remote sensing with synthetic apertures. In a first case study, it is equipped with a bistatic 24GHz MIMO radar system to create a side-looking-airborne-radar, allowing full interferometric SAR processing. As a proof-of-concept, a radar altimeter measurement is presented, which replaces and outperforms common altitude estimators, such as barometric or ultra sonic sensors.