A synthetic aperture radar (SAR) on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)

Abstract

There is a growing interest in the frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) for its small cubage, light weight, cost-effective and high resolution. In this report, a FMCW (Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave) SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) is implemented for mapping application. The SAR prototype is configured using both available hardware and software. The USRP (Universal Software Defined Radio) and external Radio frequency (RF) components is used for hardware part and open source GNU Radio is used for the software part. The USRP is gaining popularity in research area due to its flexibility and low cost. GNU RADIO is a free and open-source software development toolkit that provides signal processing blocks to implement software radios. It can be used to perform digital signal processing necessary to receive, demodulated and display the signals of interest. A SAR with centre frequency of 15GHz and a bandwidth of 160MHz is implemented using USRP and external RF components. It is able to provide a range resolution of 1m.