Live demonstration: A Ku-band FMCW synthetic aperture radar transceiver for micro-UAVs

This live demonstration presents a first-in-kind fully integrated Ku-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) transceiver chip in 65-nm CMOS that fits for micro-UAVs. The transmitter presents 13.3-dBm output power and 1.48 GHz chirp bandwidth centering at 15 GHz. The receiver front-end attains 23.5-dB gain, -33-dBm IPldB and 5.6-to-6.3dB noise figure. The receiver analog baseband achieves 0.68-to-9.8-MHz programmable passband and 55-dB variable gain range. The integrated ADC has 9.4-bit ENOB. The SAR chip achieves super-resolution of 11.2 cm and consumes only 260-mW power. The ranging and imaging functions of the prototype are showcased.

I. Introduction

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) that complements optical imagers with capabilities to acquire imagery during night and inclement weather is indispensable for remote sensing, traffic mapping, etc. Recent unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been miniaturized to <1 m³, providing an inexpensive and flexible platform for SAR imaging applications. On the other hand, there is increasing demand on the high resolution SAR imaging function. For both, it is a requisite to develop a single-chip SAR transceiver with <300-mW power consumption, <10-mm² size and <20-cm resolution, making it suitable for payload on micro-UAVs.