Low-Cost, Low-Power Radar For Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Goleta Engineering (GE) and MMCOMM with support from UCLA will develop a low-cost low-power radar (LCLPR) for small UAV (SUAV) application. The candidate RFs are: W-band, K-band, X-band and VHF/UHF. We will leverage off of existing and emerging technologies such as our Liteweight UAV Radar (LUAVR) to evolve thru extensive tradeoffs a family of alternate designs. One of these designs will be down selected for further development and demonstration in Phase II. Many key enabling technologies need to be combined to facilitate the timely development and fielding of an LCLPR. The LCLPR will be based on commercial components such as miniaturized T/R, ADC/FPGA for signal processing, an 802.11 type device for communications, miniaturized GPS and MEMS IMU for SAR motion compensation. The baseline design employs an FMCW waveform, MMIC hardware including a GAAS FET power amplifier and efficient signal processing. One of the key enabling technologies for implementing the SAR mode is signal based motion compensation (SBMC) to reduce the dependence on a motion measurement sensor (MMS). This capability has been developed and demonstrated on prior efforts by GE. During Phase I applicable SUAV platforms will be evaluated and a candidate selected to mate with the LCLPR for Phase II.