Design of RF Subsystem for L-band UAV SAR

With the development of SAR technologies, SAR systems are becoming more mature than before and their applications are more diverse. Nowadays, SAR systems can be equipped on satellites, aircrafts, vehicles and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), etc. In this paper, the design scheme of an L-band RF subsystem equipped on UAV SAR is proposed, which is utilized for pipeline inspection. The proposed RF subsystem is capable of transmitting and receiving signals, as well as internal calibration. Compared with the traditional ones, the RF subsystem applied to UAV SAR is with the features of smaller size, lower weight and higher integration, etc. The comprising and principle of the RF subsystem are described, as well as the design and analysis of RF chains are presented in this paper, proving that the proposed design scheme is feasible theoretically. Since the product is still in manufacture, the effectiveness of the design scheme will be verified by test data practically in the future research.