SBIR-STTR Award

Goleta Engineering (GE) and MMCOMM with support from Northrop-Grumman will design and develop a lightweight MMW SAR/MTI system in the 10 to 20 pound range for installation on a small UAV to support small unit operations. Many key enabling technologies need to be matured to facilitate the timely development and fielding of a lightweight SAR/MTI system. We will leverage off of existing and emerging technologies such as a 7 pound dual-mode seeker to evolve thru extensive tradeoffs a family of alternate designs in the 10 to 20 pound range. One of these designs will then be down selected for further development in the Option phase and demonstration in Phase II. The baseline design employs an FMCW waveform, MMIC hardware including a GAAS FET power amplifier and efficient signal processing. One of the key enabling technologies for implementing the lightweight SAR is signal based motion compensation (SBMC) to reduce the dependence on a motion measurement sensor (MMS). This capability has been developed and demonstrated on prior efforts by GE. MMCOMM, a MMW hardware company, provides the capability to develop and produce the lightweight MMW MMIC componentry. Northrop-Grumman provides expertise in UAV SAR applications and a path to Phase III Commercialization. The U S Army will mature lightweight MMW SAR/MTI technology and develop a system for installation on a small UAV that can be used to support small unit operations. In Phase I, the US Army will obtain detailed information on the design options available and obtain performance tradeoff data that can be used to define other related SAR/MTI systems. In the Option Phase and Phase II, they will design and demonstrate a system with the key enabling technologies.

The team of GE and MMCOMM will develop a TRL 6 prototype of the Lightweight UAV SAR / MTI Radar (LUAVR) System. This system will be designed to a weight of less than 10 lbs and will feature advanced and innovative MMW technology and signal processing. The system will feature a proprietary liteweight antenna and all solid state MMIC design. Advanced direct digital synthesis (DDS) waveform generation, advanced digital down conversion (DDC) using FPGA and advanced signal processing will be incorporated. The system will detect slow moving targets down to 1 square meter cross section and 2 m/s velocity. The SAR mode will feature resolutions down to 0.1 m both down range and cross range. A combination of motion measurement sensor (MMS) and signal based mocomp will be incorporated to insure high image quality. The system will be fabricated by extending and upgrading legacy Ka-band FMCW MMIC hardware designs to meet the requirements being evolved for the LUAVR. The signal processing will be based on adapting legacy SAR image formation processing (IFP), motion compensation and GMTI algorithms. The system will be tested in two phases: roof-top testing of the MTI mode and vehicle testing of the MTI and SAR modes.The U S Army will mature lightweight MMW SAR/MTI technology and develop a system for installation on a small UAV that can be used to support small unit operations. In addition MMW component technology will be developed that can be applied to other applications, as well as being used to expand the existing line of commercially available components and subsystems.

Keywords:
synthetic aperture radar (sar), millimeter wave (mmw), motion compensation (mocomp), fmcw, moving target indicator (mti), unmanned aerial vehicle