MULTI-PURPOSES RADAR FOR REMOTE SENSING AND NAVIGATION BY MINI AND MICRO UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLES

This paper investigates the capability of a miniaturized radar sensor developed for Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) to cope with complex mission scenarios that involve integrating and satisfying either Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) or Interferometric SAR and navigation and Sense-and-Avoid (SAA) requirements. A radar sensor based on Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) technology developed by IMST GmbH is exploited both for SAR and SAA acquisitions. The set of tests helps with understanding main issues and problems related with integration of different requirements and demonstrate that valuable data for each envisaged application can be saved with a single acquisition, thus paving the road for further and more detailed investigations.