Experimental study on small scale L-band FMCW synthetic aperture radar

This paper presents the experimental study on small scale frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) synthetic aperture radar (SAR). The FMCW SAR system which is intended for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) payload uses 25–35MHz chirp signal generated using Direct Digital Synthesizer (DDS) which is transmitted at L-band frequency of 1.27GHz generated by voltage controlled oscillator (VCO). The choice of system-components is considered to make the dimension as compact as possible so it is implementable as UAV payload. From the characterization, it shows that the system can achieve the range target detection of 1200m with the slant range resolution of 15m. Although some discrepancies occur in the measurement results which are evoked by the measurement environment, however the proposed system could satisfy the desired requirement for UAV payload.