Extremely High Frequency Rail-based Synthetic Aperture Radar

The US Army is seeking a high-resolution, rail-based synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging system capable of operating within the 100 – 300GHz frequency range. Wide bandwidth SAR technologies at this frequency range provide the potential for supporting applications that require high-resolution, non-destructive imaging. In response to this opportunity, MaXentric is proposing an EHF rail-based SAR system codenamed M-CRISP (Multi-Channel Rail-based Radar Imaging Sensor Platform). To design and develop this system, MaXentric has teamed with the mmw/Sub-THz IC group at NCSU and radar expert Dr. Aly Fathy of UTK. The proposed architecture moves a set of EHF transceivers along a linear track to provide cross-range imaging. The transceiver measurements are combined to further improve range resolution to approach 1mm resolution. The Phase I effort will focus on investigating the EHF radar imaging tradespace to create a detailed blueprint for a Phase II prototype system. During the Phase I effort, our team will reduce risk associated with future hardware prototyping by constructing a sub-THz rail-based SAR development platform. This system will be used to verify the Phase I simulations and provide a EHF imaging demonstration during Phase I.