Design and Implemetation of Compact 77 GHz Synthetic Aperture Radar for Drone Based Applications

The demands on more immediately operating synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems are increasing as SAR became a universal remote sensor that is applicable to a variety of missions. SAR systems mounted on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are expected to provide suitable solutions to such demands, as extensive technological advancements have been made over the past decade in related fields. This paper presents a compact SAR system integrated into a rotary wing consumer drone. The system is designed into the dual receiver single-input-multiple-output (SIMO) configuration in order to provide a rich applicability for the system, including the capability of single path interferometry. To overcome inherent restrictions of small UAV platforms, millimeter wave architecture is adopted to provide considerable compactness and efficiency for the system. Design details and results from an outdoor experiment which was performed to prove that the system can produce proper SAR data are discussed as well.