W Band Mini-SAR on Multi Rotor UAV Platform

Abstract

With the development of light and small multi rotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), information acquisition based on UAV carrying mini-SAR payload will bring revolutionary influence on target detection and imaging, which also puts more stringent requirements on micro SAR load. In this paper, a W band mini-SAR system for UAV is proposed, and the overall design and composition of the system are described briefly. High linearity frequency modulation source, millimeter wave substrate integrated waveguide antenna, 3D integration and motion compensation methods are used to realize the SAR in W band with miniaturization, light weight and low power consumption. W band mini-SAR prototype is developed and the imaging test based on multi-rotor UAV is carried out. A high SNR imaging with perfect focusing effect is obtained from flight test. The results show that the W band mini-SAR is suitable for small multi rotor UAV platforms, and has good performance.