Development and Testing of a Data Acquisition System for sUAS-Based Radar Applications

We developed a high-speed, compact, and lightweight data acquisition system (DAQ) for remote sensing applications using small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS). The DAQ is developed on the AMD Xilinx Radio-Frequency System on Chip (RF-SoC) platform. It can be used to directly digitize signals up to 2.212GHz. We used it to develop an ultra-wideband (UWB) monostatic pulse radar operating over the 0.7-2.2GHz frequency range with a pulse duration of 1µs and theoretical range resolution of 10cm. The monostatic radar system prototype weighs around 2.2kg and it was deployed on xFold Dragon-x6 multirotor sUAS to collect data in the field at a 60m altitude above the ground. This paper will provide an overview of the data acquisition subsystem design, its integration into the UWB radar, and results obtained over land in the University of Alabama Arboretum. The outcomes suggest that the developed UWB radar is capable of achieving detailed resolution in mapping vegetation and soil moisture with low transmitting power of −5dBm.