Ultralow cost and size radar for AAM enhanced mobile weather station

The emerging AAM market presents a new infrastructure need not addressed by today’s commercial sensors or existing infrastructure. Today’s infrastructure provides remote sensing of the atmosphere largely above 10000 ft. Deployed radar networks, NEXRAD, were configured to support long range forecasting and severe weather alerts. Wind speed sensing is achieved using high-cost LiDAR sensors; however, these become ineffective with low visibility and precipitation. Agile RF Systems (ARS) (through extensive customer discovery) has identified three critical sensors to facilitate safe and efficient AAM operations. These are a wind profiler implemented at S-band to reduce size and cost, a cloud radar implemented at Ka band for high sensitivity and small size, and a precipitation radar capable of high-speed volumetric observations to 20 km under heavy rain. Each radar type, ARS has architected sensors that enable low recurring cost with high reliability to ensure a long useful life. The wind profiler is a conventional phased array implemented using very low-cost commercial parts and is built to be modular and scalable. The cloud radar is a traditional 2-axis gimballed dish based on high reliability consumer appliance direct drive mechanisms and solid-state active feed to maximize transmit power at very low cost. The precipitation radar applies 2D AESA breakthrough technology. This radar is implemented at C-band using commercial parts and mounts to a common azimuth rotator assembly used for the cloud radar. Low cost is assured by the low-cost Software Defined Radio proven adequate in Phase I for all three sensors. The BOM for each sensor is about $10K in quantity. The financial path to commercialization is minimized by building on investments to date by USAF in ARS for our Portable Weather Radar product software and technology innovations demonstrated on past SBIR funding. Functional prototypes for each are planned in Phase II with outdoor comparison testing with TruWeather.