Design of a Ku band Instrumentation Synthetic Aperture Radar System

Abstract

This project focused on designing a Ku-band instrumentation SAR system for use by the Airborne Radar Systems and Techniques Group (Group 105) at MIT Lincoln Labs. Group 105 had an existing Ku-band SAR system intended for use on unmanned airborne platforms. The small form factor required for use on an airborne platform led to several design decisions that limit the achievable performance of the existing SAR. This project focused on developing a new instrumentation-grade SAR with better performance than the existing SAR and not subject to the small form factor constraints of the existing SAR. The new instrumentation-grade SAR is based on readily-available parts. The new SAR system was thoroughly tested in the laboratory space to verify the design and then field tested on top of the MIT Lincoln Labs parking garage. The data collected from the laboratory tests and field tests were compared to the existing radar system and the new radar system was shown to meet or exceed all of the performance objectives of the project.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Oct 14, 2015
Accession Number
AD1033733

Entities

People

  • David Kelly

Organizations

  • MIT Lincoln Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircrafts
  • Amplifiers
  • Bandpass Filters
  • Bandwidth
  • Bistatic Radar
  • Corner Reflectors
  • Data Sets
  • Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuits
  • Power Amplifiers
  • Power Levels
  • Radar
  • Software Defined Radio
  • Spectrum Analyzers
  • Synthetic Aperture Radar
  • Transmitters
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
  • Waveform Generators

Readers

  • Electronics Engineering
  • Sensor Fusion and Tracking Systems.
  • Systems Analysis and Design

Technology Areas

  • Autonomy
  • Space
  • Space - Space Objects