• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
• /
• v.30 no.2
• /
• pp.293-302
• /
• 2014

Radar systems are used in remote sensing mainly as space-borne, airborne and ground-based Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), scatterometer and Doppler radar. Those systems are composed of expensive equipments and require expertise and professional skills for operation. Because of the limitation in getting experiences of the radar and SAR systems and its operations in ordinary universities and institutions, it is difficult to learn and exercise essential principles of radar hardware which are essential to understand and develop new application fields. To overcome those difficulties, in this paper, we present the construction and experiment of a low-cost educational radar system based on the blueprints of the MIT Cantenna system. The radar system was operated in three modes. Firstly, the velocity of moving cars was measured in Doppler radar mode. Secondly, the range of two moving targets were measured in radar mode with range resolution. Lastly, 2D images were constructed in GB-SAR mode to enhance the azimuth resolution. Additionally, we simulated the SAR raw data to compare Deramp-FFT and ${\omega}-k$ algorithms and to analyze the effect of antenna positional error for SAR focusing. We expect the system can be further developed into a light-weight SAR system onboard a unmanned aerial vehicle by improving the system with higher sampling frequency, I/Q acquisition, and more stable circuit design.