Multifrequency Synthetic Aperture Radar using a Software Defined Architecture

To magnify SAR expertise in academia, the Center for Imaging Science is proposing to develop a highly re-configurable, scalable, drone-based, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) testbed using a software defined architecture. The software defined SAR testbed will be a vital classroom resource for the two SAR courses taught in the Center and will provide hands-on experience. The development of this testbed will require expertise from electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and computer science. The electrical and mechanical engineering students will integrate the hardware, perform radar trade studies to evaluate performance, and design the transmitted waveform. The computer science students will work develop the software including the Image Formation Processor (IFP) and the Automatic Target Detection (ATR) processor. The IFP is responsible for transforming the raw phase history into focused imagery. The students end with an object recognition experiment where they will try to identify an object under thick foliage. This project will lead to several publications.