Henrik's Blog About GitHub

Homemade
polarimetric synthetic
aperture radar drone

Date  2025-02-11

Introduction

Radar drone ready to take off from snow.

I have made several homebuilt radars and done some

synthetic aperture imaging testing with them on the
ground. I have wanted for a long time to put a radar on
a drone and capture synthetic aperture images from air.
When I last looked at this few years ago, medium sized
drones with payload capability were around 1,000 EUR
and up. For example in Low-Cost, High-Resolution,
Drone-Borne SAR Imaging paper by A. Bekar, M.
Antoniou and C. J. Baker, the imaging results look
excellent. They used DJI S900 drone with a list price of
about 1,000 EUR. The price for the whole system is
quoted to be £15,000, which is a way too high for my
personal budget even just for the price of the drone.
Many other papers use similar style medium sized drones
designed for carrying cameras and they are usually
equipped with RTK-GPS for accurate positioning.

One of many cheap Chinese FPV kits.

Recently small FPV drone prices have dropped a lot.

Small 5 and 7 inch propeller quadcopters can be bought
for about 100 EUR from China (not including battery and
RC controller). Despite their small size they are able to lift
about 1 kg or even heavier payload which is plenty for a
small radar.

I bought the cheapest Chinese no-name 7-inch FPV kit

and a small GPS+compass module to support
autonomous flying with the goal of making a light weight
synthetic aperture radar system that it can carry.

Synthetic aperture
imaging
A single-channel radar can only measure the distance to
a target and is unable to detect the angle of the target.
When multiple receiver channels are arranged in a line,
the signal travels slightly different distances to each
receiver based on the target's angle, causing phase shifts
in the received signals. These phase shifts allows
calculating the angle of the target.

Angular resolution (Δθ ) of antenna depends on its size

approximately as: Δθ ≈ λ/D , where λ is the
wavelength, and D is the diameter of the antenna. For
example to have 1 m resolution at 1 km distance requires
0.03° angular resolution with 6 GHz RF frequency. This
would require antenna size to be about 100 meters.

Instead of making a single large antenna, it's possible to

move a single radar and take multiple measurements at
different positions. If the scene remains static, this
approach yields the same results as having one many
channel radar system with big antenna. With synthetic
aperture radar it's possible to attach a single-channel
radar to a drone, fly it while making measurements,
creating a large synthetic aperture that provides
exceptional angular resolution.

Radar design

Dimensions of the drone frame. (3d model source)

The design goal for the radar is to get the best imaging
performance while being able to fit into the FPV drone
and achieving it with minimal budget (<500 EUR). The
budget limitation rules out using any low-loss RF
materials and both electronics and antennas should be
implemented with lossy FR4 PCB material.

The drone is quite small and this limits the maximum size
of the radar. The width of the frame is about 40 mm and
propeller tip-to-tip distance is 50 mm across the frame.
Length is about 170 mm, which is much more than width
and means that ideally the radar is skinny. For example
Raspberry Pi is 56 x 85 mm which is too wide. The small
size severely limits on what the radar can include.
TX signal
f
TX signal
Power amplifier f
Mixer
t

t
Coupler TX and RX
Ramp generator T/R switch
antennas Ramp generator

LO
Antenna
ADC f

Anti-alias Mixer Low-noise

f filter f amplifier f ADC t
RX signal
(delayed and attenuated TX signal)
Anti-alias Mixer Low-noise
t t t filter amplifier
ADC input signal Mixer input signals RX signal
(delayed and attenuated TX signal)

Block diagrams of FMCW (left) and pulse radar (right).

There are several possible architectures for the radar. I

previously made pulse radar that is about 64 x 132 mm.
That's little too wide for the drone, but I believe it would
be possible to shrink it a little. Issue with that radar is that
the maximum bandwidth is about 100 MHz and it's
limited by the ADC sampling rate. This corresponds to a
range resolution of 1.5 m, which isn't quite high enough
for a detailed image. It's hard to get much larger ADC
bandwidth on a reasonable budget and fitting high speed
ADCs on the limited space is also an issue. There's also
a variation of pulse radar that has two ramp generators,
one for RX and one for TX. This results in low frequency
IF signal like with FMCW radar. This is an architecture
that is often used on SAR radars as it allows for high RF
bandwidth without requiring high speed ADC.

Since pulse radar with switched antenna can't transmit

and receive at the same time, pulsed radar maximum
pulse length is limited by the time it takes for the pulse to
travel to the target and back. With for example 100 m
minimum distance, the maximum pulse length to not
miss any part of the pulse is only 670 ns. Because pulse
radar needs to divide measurement time between
transmission and reception it reduces the average
transmit power and decreases the signal-to-noise ratio.
Large number of very short pulses also complicates the
image formation. Time taken by the SAR image formation
scales with the number of pulses and very short
maximum pulse length requires transmitting very large
number of them for a good SNR image.

FMCW radar can transmit and receive at the same time

and which improves the signal-to-noise ratio. The
maximum sweep length is only limited by the synthetic
aperture sampling speed requirements but it can be
hundreds of µs. Unlike pulse radar, there is also a
minimum sweep length requirement, since reflected
signal is mixed to the transmitted signal it needs to be
received while the sweep is still being transmitted. Long
sweep length allows collecting much more reflected
power per one sweep. Pulse radar could also use
separate TX and RX antennas so that this wouldn't be an
issue, but that removes its advantages compared to
cheaper to implement FMCW radar. Separate transmit
and receive antennas require more space, but due to
large maximum length it should be possible to fit two
small antennas side-by-side under the drone.

In general FMCW radar has advantage for short range

and slow moving platform applications. Pulse radar is
required when long range (more than few km) is needed.

RF design
H
PA
V
PLL
TX polarization
switch

IF amp LNA H

ADC V

RX polarization
switch

FMCW radar architecture.

Above is the block diagram of the RF parts of the FMCW

radar with dual-polarized antennas. The sweep is
generated by PLL, it's passed through a variable
attenuator and then amplified by the power amplifier.
Most of it is passed to the transmit antenna, polarization
switch controls whether vertically or horizontally
polarized antenna is used. Part of the transmitted signal
is coupled to the receiver mixer, where it's mixed
together with the received reflected signal that has been
amplified by the LNA. Receiver also has a polarization
switch, together with the transmit switch it allows the
radar to receiver and transmit any of the four
combinations of polarizations. The mixer outputs a low
frequency signal that is amplified and then digitized by
the ADC. Some filtering is needed in the receiver to avoid
large out of band signals and ADC aliasing.

DAC or DDS based sweep generation would likely be

better than PLL. DDS phase noise is often better and it
can change frequencies essentially instantly compared to
PLL, but PLL is chosen because it's cheaper and
requires less space.

RF frequency is going to be around 6 GHz as this is the

maximum frequency where there are many cheap RF
components for consumer applications. The highest
output power cheap power amplifiers at this frequency
output around 30 dBm. Low noise amplifiers for the
receiver with 1 - 2 dB noise figure can also be obtained
cheaply.

Receiver is direct conversion architecture and the mixer

does not have any image rejection. This causes both
frequencies above and below the transmitted signal to be
converted to the same output frequency. This is not ideal
as noise below and above the instantaneous sweep
frequency is received increasing the noise floor by 3 dB.
IQ sampling receiver that could reject the other sideband
would need two mixers and ADCs. For only 3 dB
increase in the signal to noise ratio, I didn't think it was
worth the cost and PCB space.

Polarization switches allow choosing which polarization

is used to transmit and receive. H is horizontal and V is
vertical polarization. This allows measuring four
polarizations: HH, HV, VH and VV, where the first letter
denotes TX polarization and the second RX. Some
targets reflect some polarizations more than others and it
is used in remote sensing to determine properties of
reflected targets. For example many smooth targets often
reflect the same polarization with shape of the target
determining if it reflects more HH or VV components.
Forest and vegetation usually has higher cross-polarized
HV and VH component reflection compared to roads and
bare ground due to multiple reflections inside the
vegetation.

Although H and V antennas are drawn separately in the

block diagram, this doesn't mean that the system
requires four antennas. It's possible to design antenna
with two ports, one which radiates H and the other V
polarization. Dual polarized antenna doesn't necessarily
need any more space than single polarized antenna.

It would be possible to receive both H and V at the same

time if the radar would have two receivers. This would
have some advantages, it would allow removing the RX
polarization switch which would decrease the losses and
only the TX should be switched allowing more time for
each measurement which would also increase SNR. It
would also allow transmitting sweeps faster as there isn't
need to multiplex the receiver polarization switch.
However, I didn't consider it being worth the cost.

TX-RX leakage
Input power
Damage threshold
LNA saturation
ADC clipping
TX-RX leakage
Receiver
dynamic
range
Signal
RF noise floor
ADC quantization noise

Frequency
TX-RX leakage can saturate the receiver on high powered
FMCW radar if the leakage is too high.

More RF power generally improves the signal-to-noise

ratio, but since FMCW radar transmits and receives at
the same time, it's important to consider the TX-RX
leakage signal. The receiver must be sensitive enough to
be able to detect the thermal noise floor at -174 dBm/Hz
without saturating due to leaked RF power from the
transmitter antenna. Typical maximum input power that
saturates the LNA is around -20 dBm. With +30 dBm
transmitted power more than 50 dB isolation is needed
between transmitter and receiver to prevent the receiver
saturation. Even more isolation might be required if some
other receiver component, such as ADC, saturates first.
The variable attenuator before PA can be used to
decrease the transmit power in case high enough
isolation antennas don't fit in the drone. It also affects the
receiver mixer's LO power, but mixers LO input power
range should be large enough for it to not be an issue.

Link budget
The equation for the received power at the receiver input
can be written as:

Pt G2 λ2 σ
Pr =
(4π) 3 r4

where Pt is the transmitter power, G is the antenna gain,

λ is wavelength, σ is radar cross section of the target,
and r is range to the target. This is the received power
from one pulse. Synthetic aperture is formed by sending
multiple pulses while moving and these can all be
coherently summed together to increase the signal to
noise ratio. If image is formed from n pulses, the
received power can be multiplied by n to get the
received power in the whole image.

Radar cross section σ of the target depends on the

resolution of the radar and radar reflectivity of the ground
patch. Target radar cross section can be written as:
σ = δxδyσ0 , where δx is the resolution in the range
direction, δy is resolution in cross-range direction, and
σ0 is reflectivity of the ground patch per square meter. In
this case δx ≈ δy ≈ 0.3m , depending on the radar
parameters, range and imaging geometry. Reflectivity of
the ground patch depends on the material of the ground
patch and the angle of illumination. Reflectivity of ground
is generally higher when it's illuminated at 90 degree
angle (in direction of the ground normal vector). This
causes the specular reflection to reflect back to the radar.
At smaller angles there is still some reflection back to the
radar, but it decreases as the look angle decreases.
Typical ground reflectivity is around -20 to 0 dBsm
(decibels square meter) with moderate look angle.

The minimum detectable power is limited by thermal

noise of the receiver. It can be written as kT BF , where
k is Boltzmann constant, T is receiver temperature, B is
the noise bandwidth and F is noise figure of the receiver.
It's a common mistake to confuse the noise bandwidth
B with RF bandwidth, but they are not related to each
other. Noise bandwidth is the minimum bandwidth where
receiver can separate noise and signal from each other.
By taking Fourier transform of the input signal, we can
discard all the frequency bins that are beyond the signal
we are currently looking at, and noise at those discarded
frequencies won't affect the detection capabilities of the
receiver. FFT resolution resolution is equal to 1/ts , where
ts is the sweep length.
Setting the received power Pr equal to noise power and
solving for σ 0 we get noise equivalent sigma zero (NESZ)
that is value often used for comparing synthetic aperture
radars.

(4π) 3 r4 kF T
NESZ =
nδxδyG2 λ2 Pt ts
The number of pulses in image n could also be written
as tm PRF , where tm is the measurement time and
PRF is pulse repetition frequency. Or equivalently
lm PRF/v , where lm is the length of the flown track,
and v is the velocity of the drone during measurement. If
the antenna points at a constant angle during
measurement (stripmap image) the number of pulses in
the image depends on the time that ground patch is
illuminated by the antenna beam and can be much
smaller than the previous number if the antenna beam is
narrow. Quadcopter can easily fly pointing in arbitrary
angle and it's possible to constantly point the antenna at
the target (spotlight imaging) and this limitation doesn't
necessarily apply in this case.

VariableExplanation Value
Pt Transmitted power 30 dBm
G Antenna gain 10 dBi
λ Wavelength 5.2 cm
0.3 x 0.3
δxδy Image pixel resolution
m
T Receiver temperature 290 K
ts Pulse length 200 µs
Number of pulses in
n 10000
image
F Receiver noise figure 6 dB

Noise equivalent sigma zero vs range with above listed

parameters.

Plotting the NESZ as a function of range gives the above

plot. There are some parameters that can be adjusted,
mainly sweep length and the number of sweeps in image
to slightly improve this figure. The requires NESZ for
good quality image depends on the actual reflectivity of
the ground, but typically for satellite based SAR NESZ is
around -20 dBsm. With these parameters we should
expect to see to around 1 - 2 km with ok image quality.

Pulse repetition
frequency

Minimum alias-free pulse repetition frequency with 6 GHz RF

frequency and with different number of time-multiplexed
channels.

Radar image formation relies on the phase information of

the received signal. If we consider a target that is 90
degrees from the antenna beam center (in the direction of
movement) to avoid phase ambiguity, the maximum
phase difference between two adjacent measurements
needs to be less than 180 degrees. If the movement is
larger than this, there can be multiple targets at different
azimuth angles that have the same phase difference
between measurements causing them to overlap in the
image. Since both transmitter and receiver antennas
move, a distance of a quarter wavelength between two
measurements of the same target results in a half-
wavelength difference in the distance traveled by the
signal and a half-wavelength distance difference
corresponds to 180-degree phase difference. At this
spacing, targets at ±90 degrees will have the same 180-
degree phase difference between measurements. If the
measurement spacing is increased further more of the
image starts to alias.

If the antenna is very directive then it's possible to use

larger measurement spacing. Directive antenna won't
radiate to large angles that would alias, and the more
directive the antenna is, the larger the measurement
spacing can be. However, since the drone is space-
limited and antenna directivity is related to its size, it
might not be possible to design a very directive antenna
causing the maximum measurement spacing to be
around quarter wavelength.

The common flying speed for a quadcopter is around 10

m/s, but flying speed can easily be decreased if needed.
With 6 GHz RF frequency, the quarter wavelength is 12.5
mm (0.5 inches) and 10 m/s flying speed means that
pulse repetition frequency needs to be at least 800 Hz.
Since we have time multiplexed four different
polarizations, we need to be able to measure all of them
in this time.

PRF sets the requirement for maximum sweep length.

With 4 * 800 Hz = 3.2 kHz PRF requirement this leaves
maximum of 312.5 µs per sweep. However, some time
needs to be reserved for time between sweeps due to
limited locking time of the PLL. The locking time of the
PLL is around 20 - 30 µs, leaving 280 µs for the
maximum sweep length.

Required ADC sampling

frequency

Required ADC sampling rate vs maximum range and RF

bandwidth for FMCW radar with 250 µs sweep length.

FMCW radar mixes the received signal with a copy of the

transmitted sweep, resulting in a sine wave signal at the
mixer output with frequency depending on the range to
the target. If the target is at distance r , the IF frequency
f can be calculated as: f = 2Br ct
, where B is the
s
bandwidth of the RF sweep, c is the speed of light, and
ts is the sweep length. The range resolution depends on
the RF bandwidth B as Δr = c . For example, 150
2B
MHz bandwidth is required for 1 m resolution, and 300
MHz bandwidth results in 0.5 m resolution.

If we have 300 MHz of RF bandwidth (0.5 m range

resolution) and ts is 280 µs as calculated earlier, then we
can calculate the required ADC sampling speed given the
maximum target range we want to detect. For example,
with 2 km maximum range, the IF signal frequency is 14
MHz. The ADC sampling frequency needs to be at least
double this due to Nyquist sampling requirement, and
some additional margin is needed for the anti-alias filter
roll-off. This results in a minimum ADC sampling
frequency of about 35 MHz. I chose to use 50 MHz
sampling frequency.

FPGA
EMMC
SD-card 32 GB memory

25 Mbps 500 Mbps

FPGA
DDR3 PS PL
4x6.4 Gbps
Dual-Core Programmable
512 MB
ARM Logic ADC
17 Gbps Cortex-A9 600 Mbps
12 bits
16 bits 50 MHz
1066 MHz 4x64 bits
100 MHz

0.9 Mbps 1 Gbps

Flight controller USB3.0 PC connection,

not used during
serial FT600 drone measurements

Block diagram of digital parts.

The amount of data and strict timing requirements of the

sweep generation make it difficult to handle with
microcontroller and FPGA is necessary. Microcontroller is
useful for more complicated tasks such as
communication with the drone flight controller and
ground station, configuring the radar, and writing the data
to a filesystem. I decided to use Zynq 7020 FPGA, the
same one I used in my previous pulse radar. It has FPGA
fabric and a dual-core ARM processor in the same
package. This FPGA is nominally 150 EUR from ordinary
distributors, but is available for fraction of that from
Chinese distributors.

The drawback of this FPGA is that the microcontroller

doesn't have many high speed connections. For example
SD-card and EMMC interfaces are limited to 25 MB/s,
which is below the data rate of the ADC. It does have 1
Gbps Ethernet, but using that would require adding a
Raspberry Pi or similar computer, which isn't possible
due to size constraints. For instance, newer Ultrascale+
FPGAs support SD-cards with 52 MB/s and EMMC at
200 MB/s speeds, but they cost around 500 EUR and are
not available from Chinese low cost distributors.

Zynq can have external DDR3 DRAM, but due to space

limitations, it's not possible to fit enough DRAM to store
the whole measurement in memory. With limitation of
only one DDR3 module, the memory is limited to 1 GB,
while size of the measurement can be several gigabytes.

This leaves only the option of implementing fast enough

external communication interface in the programmable
logic side of the FPGA. Luckily Dan Gisselquist (ZipCPU)
has made GPL3-licensed SD-card and EMMC controller
that supports faster high-speed communication modes
than the hard IP included with the ARM processor.

At the time, sdspi controller hadn't been tested with real

hardware at the speeds I required. To make sure I have
something working if I'm unable to get the sdspi core
working I connected the SD-card to the ARM processor's
integrated controller, which is limited to 25 MB/s, and
EMMC memory to the programmable logic side that is
used with the sdspi controller. This way I'm able to at
least use the SD-card with the integrated controller if the
sdspi core isn't suitable, but this turned out to be
unnecessary and the sdspi controller worked fine. In
future versions, it would be better to also connect the
SD-card to PL side using sdspi core for faster SD-card
speeds.

I also added FT600 USB3 bridge IC that can be used to

connect FPGA to PC. This is not needed for drone usage,
but allows real-time connection to PC for other
applications.

EMMC
SD-card 32 GB memory

Programmable
PL Logic EMMC
DDR3 DMA controller

512 MB PS sdspi
ADC
Dual-Core Decimating
ARM DMA 12 bits
FIR filter
Cortex-A9 1,2 or 4x
50 MHz
decimation

AXI registers Radar

Configurable registers
for programming the
timer
Controls
timer parameters, etc.
IO pins during
measurement

DMA FT600
controller

Flight controller USB3.0

serial FT600

FPGA program block diagram.

FPGA functionality is quite simple at the block diagram

level. The design primarily consists of a few independent
blocks wired with either DMA or AXI bus to the
processor. For radar operation, the radar timer block is
important as it switches internal and external signals
during the measurement. It needs to be implemented in
the FPGA fabric to ensure that the timing is clock cycle
accurate to achieve phase-stable radar measurements.
AXI bus is memory-mapped on the processor side,
allowing the radar to be controlled by writing values to
fixed memory addresses.

A decimating FIR filter after ADC data input can be used

to change the sample rate of the ADC data. It can
decimate by 1, 2, or 4. For long-range measurements,
the decimation should be disabled for the maximum IF
bandwidth. But for shorter-range measurements it makes
sense to use higher decimation value to decrease the
amount of data that needs to be stored.

PCB

Labeled PCB 3D model in KiCad. Some 3D models are

missing.

The PCB has six layers and is designed to be as

compact as possible, with components placed closely
together to minimize size. Since one-sided assembly is
cheaper than assembling both sides, the bottom side is
empty except for one SD-card connector that I will solder
myself.

As with many of my previous radars, the RF part is a

relatively small part of the PCB and the overall design
effort. Digital electronics and voltage regulators take up
the majority of the PCB space.

Assembled PCB.

The radar is designed to accept input voltage from 12 to

30 V and connect directly to the drone's battery
eliminating the need for an external DC/DC regulator.

Due to space constraints, there wasn't enough space to

fit four SMA connectors and I didn't want to use any
miniature RF connectors. The top two connectors are
switchable TX outputs for H and V polarization antenna
inputs, while the bottom third one is RX input. The RX
polarization switch is located on an external PCB and
connects to one of the three four-pin JST connectors on
the bottom right of the PCB. Another JST connectors is
for flight controller's serial port, and the third connector is
currently unused, but it could be used to connect for
example GPS.

There are two USB-C connectors: one for JTAG

programming and debugging of the FPGA, and the other
connects to USB3 to FIFO bridge chip that enables fast
data transfer to PC. It isn't needed in drone use, but it's
useful for testing and other applications.

PCB dimensions are 113 x 48 mm. Width is just skinny

enough to fit on the drone, while it could have been
slightly longer.

This component is not sale for individuals.

After ordering the PCB I made an order for the

components from Mouser. The order seemed to succeed
fine and they accepted my money but I got the above
email afterwards telling me that they can't sell me one of
the components. Reason seems to be that the supplier of
the component has forbidden them for selling it to
individuals. This was very frustrating as there was
absolutely no warnings on the website and I had already
ordered the PCBs. I was unable to order this component
from anywhere, but I did find older obsolete PE43204 pin
compatible IC from obsolete component reseller. It's
specified only for maximum of 4 GHz when the original
was up to 6 GHz but it does seems to have low enough
loss at 6 GHz to not cause too large issues.

After asking on reddit the reason is probably that the

manufacturer of the component wants to know who they
are selling to, to avoid their components ending up in
defense applications. That's fine, but it would have been
nice to know that in advance.

SD-card interposer PCB.

I did make one mistake: SD-card pins are connected to

1.8 V I/O pins, while they should be connected to 3.3 V
I/O and SD-card didn't work with this lower voltage. The
radar could be used without SD-card by storing the data
into EMMC instead and then reading it through USB, but
SD-card would be much easier to use. I really didn't want
to order another PCB to just fix this one mistake and I
managed to fix it by designing a small interposer PCB
with level shifter that I soldered on top of the previous
SD-card footprint. I wrote about it in more detail in a
previous post.

Aluminium PCB heatsink under the radar PCB.

Power amplifier can get quite hot if the transmit duty
cycle is high. To keep it cool I ordered custom aluminium
substrate PCB that I bolted under the radar PCB. Solder
mask is removed under the PA and thermal pad is placed
between the PCB and heatsink. This cost only $4 for 5
pieces and works very well.

Drone electronics

Speedybee F405 V3 flight controller.

Flight controller came with the drone kit. The included

flight controller is Speedybee F405 V3. This is a cheap
low-end flight controller with 1 MB of flash. It does the
job, but I would recommend getting a little bit better flight
controller with 2 MB of flash, the price difference isn't
very large.

There are several possible flight controller softwares. The

three most used for FPV drones are: Betaflight, Inav, and
ArduPilot. The main differences of them are: Betaflight
focuses on fast-response manual flying and doesn't have
autonomous flight support, Inav shares lot of code with
Betaflight and it includes some autonomous flight
support, and ArduPilot has the most advanced
autonomous flight capability with lot of features but it's
more challenging to configure.

I chose to use Ardupilot and found it to be excellent for

this purpose. It has very good IMU and GPS sensor
fusion algorithm that is very helpful for improving the
position accuracy. The flight controller can communicate
with the radar through a serial port allowing it to enable
and disable the radar during autonomous mission and
provide position information for the radar.

GPS with integrated compass. It needs to be mounted far

away from the battery leads to avoid magnetic fields causing
issues with the compass.

SAR imaging needs very accurate position information

for proper image focusing. Position information should be
accurate within to a fraction of wavelength, this is just
few cm (1 - 2 inches) at this frequency. Many commercial
SAR imaging drones use RTK GPS with a second
stationary GPS receiver on the ground it's possible to
obtain about 1 cm accurate positioning. The drawback is
that it's much more costly than regular GPS and RTK
GPS receivers are usually much larger than ordinary GPS
receivers which makes it very difficult to fit it in this
drone.

Good non-RTK GPS might be accurate to about 1 m

accuracy. This large positioning errors cause significant
errors in the image if not corrected. Luckily, it's possible
to solve for position error from the radar data which is
called autofocusing. With drawback of needing more
processing during the image formation for autofocusing,
it's possible to use regular GPS. Sensor fusion with
inertial measurement unit (IMU) can be used to improve
accuracy of the positioning and obtain position updates
faster than the maximum of about 4 Hz that is possible
with only GPS.

For autonomous flying the drone's flight computer also

needs GPS, IMU and compass. It would be a waste of
space to have a second GPS and IMU for just the radar
and instead I'm relying on the flight computer to output
its position estimate to the radar through a serial
interface.

Flight UART
Radio ELRS Radio controller GPS and
controller
Radio UART Speedybee F405 V3 compass
Ardupilot
link I2C
Wifi
UART

Laptop
Ground station Radar

Drone block diagram.

The drone is controlled with a radio controller. I use

ExpressLRS radio link, which is very common with FPV
drones. The drone also has a radio link to the ground
control software running on PC. This is needed for
programming the autonomous mission parameters,
changing drone settings, it can be used to control the
drone, and it displays telemetry during the flight. Ground
station can also be used to send messages to radar
through the flight controller and this allows programming
the radar parameters from the laptop.

Typically Ardupilot has required using two radios. One for

radio controller and other for telemetry, but ELRS recently
added Mavlink support that allows using a single radio
for both purposes. This is very convenient in this
application.

Antennas
In theory, the wider the antenna beam width is, the better
the resolution of SAR image is. A famous result in SAR
imaging is that the best possible cross-range resolution
in strip mode SAR (fixed antenna angle and straight
baseline) is L/2 , where L is the length of the antenna.
However, in practice wider antenna beam isn't often
better. Wider antenna beam means lower gain which
decreases the signal to noise ratio and limits the
maximum range. Antenna gain is squared in the link
budget so halving the antenna gain, means that number
of pulses need to be quadrupled to get the same SNR.

The cross-range resolution depends on the length of the

baseline where the target is visible and the wider the
antenna beam is the longer this is. With spotlight
imaging, where antenna tracks the target, cross-range
resolution is not limited by the antenna beam width and
spotlight imaging is easy with drone. With drone SAR the
maximum possible baseline length is often the limiting
factor for resolution as it's hard to fly very long track
when limited by visual line of sight.

The azimuth angle resolution in spotlight imaging mode

(or in stripmap mode where antenna beam always covers
the target) can be approximated as: Δθ ≈ λ/L, where
λ is wavelength and L is the length of the track. Cross-
range resolution can be obtained with:
Δy = 2r sin(Δθ/2) , where r is distance to the target.
With drone SAR a big issue is how to fit large enough
antennas on the drone. Since the radar is FMCW,
separate transmitter and receiver antennas are needed
further decreasing the space per antenna and low TX-RX
leakage requires having some distance between them.

I have previously used self-made horn antennas with my

radars, but they are too big to fit on drone. The whole
length of the horn antenna is 100 mm, and even just the
coaxial-to-waveguide transition is 25 mm long. This size
makes it impossible to fit on the drone, which has only 50
mm spacing between propeller tips. My previous horn
antenna isn't dual-polarized, but horn can be made dual-
polarized easily by adding two feeds 90 degree apart.

Patch antenna can be made much smaller since they are

just copper on a PCB. They can also be made dual-
polarized with two feeds 90 degree apart. However, a
simple patch on 1.6 mm thick FR4 PCB has poor
bandwidth, FR4 dielectric inaccuracy can cause
frequency shift, and the gain isn't very high. Gain can be
improved by making an array of patches, but with FR4
substrate the losses in feeding network increase quickly.

Stacked aperture coupled patch antenna. Side (left) and top

(right) views.

Neither horn nor patch antenna seemed suitable. After

reading some scientific papers I found this dual-polarized
slot-fed stacked patch antenna paper. It consists of
patch antenna that is fed by microstrip lines that couple
to patch through H-shaped slots in the ground plane.
Two feed lines and slots 90 degree apart can be used to
make it dual-polarized. A second patch is suspended few
mm away from the first patch with air in between them.
This structure can achieve much wider bandwidth than a
single patch making it tolerant to frequency shift caused
by inaccuracy of FR4 permittivity. The second patch also
slightly increases the gain.

TX and RX patch fed horn antennas.

However, more gain would be good to have for improving

the signal-to-noise ratio. Sidelobes at 90 degree angle
should also be lower to decrease TX-RX leakage. To
solve this I added a sheet metal horn structure around
the antenna, making it a stacked patch fed horn antenna.
The horn increases the height by 10 mm, but even just a
sheet metal wrapped around the patch gap increases the
gain and decreases sidelobes without increasing the
height. I haven't found a similar structure in any
publications, but it wouldn't surprise me if some exist, as
it does seem straightforward.

A pyramidal horn with filled-in corners would likely offer

slightly higher gain and be mechanically stiffer than this
four-flap design. However, this was easier for me to
manufacture. I cut the copper sheet by hand with
scissors and soldered it to keep it together.

This antenna has everything I wanted. It's dual-polarized,

has very wide bandwidth, good gain, isn't as tall as
similar gain horn antenna fed with coaxial-to-waveguide
transition, and it's cheap to manufacture requiring just
two FR4 PCBs, some copper sheet and few bolts and
spacers. FR4 is lossy and gain would likely be around 0.5
- 1.0 dB higher if a proper low loss RF material was used,
but the cost would be about 100x higher in prototype
quantities and it doesn't make sense for me to spend so
much more for so little improvement.

Between the antennas is a small 0.25 x 0.5 wavelength

wall that decreases TX-RX coupling. I tested few different
size walls and this small wall is more effective than no
wall and also more effective than taller walls.

Not counting the SMA connectors, the height of the

antenna is 18 mm, of which 10 mm is the height of the
horn above the suspended patch. Total height including
the SMA connector is 28 mm. Patch substrate dimension
is 45 x 45 mm and the horn aperture is 65 x 65 mm.

Backside of the antennas. Each antenna has two SMA

connectors, one for H and other for V polarization.

Backside of the antennas is covered by copper sheet to

decrease the backwards radiation. This is needed
because antennas are mounted right on top of the radar
PCB which doesn't have any shielding. Without shielding
TX antenna backwards radiation would increase the TX-
RX coupling. Copper sheet is also inserted into the wall
between antennas and the tape keeps it in place.

Simulated radiation pattern of the antenna.

The simulated -3 dB beamwidth is 50/60 degrees in 0/90

degree angles. H and V feed slots are rotated 90 degrees
and the radiation pattern from the other port is similar but
rotated 90 degrees. Simulated peak gain is 10.0 dB.

Sidelobe to 90 degree direction is about -10 dB. It's

important for this to be low to minimize TX-RX leakage.

Since the antenna radiation pattern isn't quite

symmetrical, mounting the other antenna at a 90-degree
rotation compared to the first one ensures good antenna
pattern matching between HH and VV polarizations. If the
TX antenna transmits H polarization from the first port,
RX antenna receives H polarization from the other port,
and other way around for V, causing the two-way antenna
pattern to match between the both cases. However, HV
and VH antenna patterns don't match the HH and VV
patterns, since in the cross-polarization case the same
port is used to transmit and receive on both antennas.

Measured S-parameters of the antenna.

There is a slight difference in the H and V port matching

due to their slightly different coupling slot sizes. Antenna
useable bandwidth is from about 4.5 GHz to 6.2 GHz
which is more than enough for this application.

Mechanical design

Drone mechanical model in Blender.

The drone needs some mechanical parts to hold the

radar on the drone frame. The flight controller is mounted
inside the frame, but there isn't enough room inside it for
the radar, so I designed a 3D printed mount that holds
the radar PCB under the drone frame. This mounting
position also requires landing legs so that the drone
doesn't land on the radar. I designed it in Blender since I
don't know any mechanical CAD programs. It works just
fine for these simple parts.

Radar attached under the drone.

The radar mount holds the radar PCB on the drone

frame. It would be a good idea to have some sort of
weather proof enclosure for it, but I haven't got around it
yet. I added some material over the PCB to protect it in
case the landing legs fail.

Radar holder attaches with four screws to the drone.

Drone radio controller antenna is visible at the bottom
left. Propellers are collapsible, these make it much easier
to transport the drone as with these it fits in a backpack.

Receiver polarization switch PCB.

Antenna board is held with two bolts that allow its angle
to be changed. Flight controller serial port is attached to
one of the JST connectors. There also other JST
connector from flight controller that is currently unused
and just held with tape in place.

Transmitter has polarization switch and two SMA

connectors on the PCB, but the receiver polarization
switch is on a separate PCB due to lack of space. I had a
mounting holes for it on the radar holder part, but the
SMA cables are stiff enough that I found it easier to just
leave it hanging there. Polarization switch connects to
the radar PCB with another JST connector.

Drone with landing legs.

Landing legs are 10 cm diameter carbon tubes with 3D

printed TPU caps. Smaller diameter tube would have
likely been fine, these are very stiff and something else
would fail before them if they are stressed too much in
landing.

Radar is powered directly from the drone battery. XT60

splitter is used to connect both flight controller and radar
to the same battery.

Drone balanced on a kitchen scale.

Weight of the drone without battery is just 752 grams

(1.66 lbs). I have two six cell LiPo batteries, the smaller
1300 mAh capacity battery weights 196 grams and the
bigger 2200 mAh battery weights 322 grams. With the
smaller battery the total weight of the whole system is
just 948 grams.

Image formation
Radar measures the distance and phase of each target.
To convert these measurements into a radar image,
matched filtering can be used. For each pixel in the
image, generate a reference signal corresponding to what
a target at that position would reflect. Multiply the
measured signal with the complex conjugate of the
reference signal for each measurement, then sum these
products over all measurements. When the measured
signal closely matches the reference signal, their product
becomes large because the phases align. If it doesn't
match, the result of the multiplication is a complex
number with a random phase, and summing random
complex numbers will average out generating a low
response.

The image formation can be written as:

N
I = ∑ ∑ Sn (d(p, xn )) ⋅ H(d(p, xn )) ∗
p∈P n=1

, where P is the set of pixels in the image, N is the

number of radar measurements, Sn is Fourier
transformed measured IF signal sn , d(p, x n ) is the
distance to location of pixel p from radar position at that
measurement x n , and H ∗ is complex conjugate of the
reference function of what target at that position in the
image should look like (Fourier transform of the radar IF
signal from target at that position in the image).

This is called backprojection algorithm. It's simple and

doesn't make any approximations or assumptions about
flight geometry, but it's very demanding to calculate. For
example with 1 km x 1 km image with 0.3 m resolution
and 10,000 radar sweeps, calculating the image needs
(1000/0.3) 2 ⋅ 10000 = 111 ⋅ 109 backprojections.
This means over 100 billion complex exponentials and
square root calculations is needed for one image, and
image size and number of sweeps can be even larger in
practice. There are some clever algorithms that can be
used to speed this up, but they often have
approximations or only work with linear flight tracks. One
easy improvement that can be made without many
drawbacks, is to use polar coordinates instead of
Cartesian coordinates, as that requires less pixels in the
image since angular resolution is constant while cross-
range resolution is better closer to the radar. Polar
coordinate image can then be afterwards interpolated to
Cartesian grid.

__global__ void backprojection_polar_2

d_kernel(
const complex64_t* data, con
st float* pos, complex64_t* img,
int sweep_samples, int nswee
ps, float ref_phase,
float delta_r, float r0, flo
at dr, float theta0,
float dtheta, int Nr, int Nt
heta, float d0) {
const int idx = blockIdx.x * block
1
Dim.x + threadIdx.x;
2
const int idtheta = idx % Ntheta;
3
const int idr = idx / Ntheta;
4
5
if (idr >= Nr || idtheta >= Nthet
6
a) {
7
return;
8
}
9
10
const float r = r0 + idr * dr;
11
const float theta = theta0 + idthe
12
ta * dtheta;
13
const float x = r * sqrtf(1.0f - t
14
heta*theta);
15
const float y = r * theta;
16
17
complex64_t pixel = {0.0f, 0.0f};
18
19
for(int i = 0; i < nsweeps; i++) {
20
// Sweep reference position.
21
float pos_x = pos[idbatch * ns
22
weeps * 3 + i * 3 + 0];
23
float pos_y = pos[idbatch * ns
24
weeps * 3 + i * 3 + 1];
25
float pos_z = pos[idbatch * ns
26
weeps * 3 + i * 3 + 2];
27
float px = (x - pos_x);
28
float py = (y - pos_y);
29
float pz2 = pos_z * pos_z;
30
31
// Calculate distance to the p
32
ixel.
33
float drx = 2.0f * sqrtf(px *
34
px + py * py + pz2) - d0;
35
float sx = delta_r * d;
36
37
// Linear interpolation.
38
int id0 = sx;
39
int id1 = id0 + 1;
40
if (id0 < 0 || id1 >= sweep_sa
41
mples) {
42
continue;
43
}
44
complex64_t s0 = data[i * swee
45
p_samples + id0];
46
complex64_t s1 = data[i * swee
47
p_samples + id1];
48
49
float interp_idx = sx - id0;
50
complex64_t s = (1.0f - interp
51
_idx) * s0 + interp_idx * s1;
52

float ref_sin, ref_cos;

sincospif(ref_phase * d, &ref_
sin, &ref_cos);
complex64_t ref = {ref_cos, re
f_sin};
pixel += s * ref;
}
img[idr * Ntheta + idtheta] = pixe
l;
}

Some years ago this would have been unbelievable

amount of compute, but with modern GPU this can be
calculated in under a second. This problem is especially
well suited for GPU implementation since every pixel can
be calculated independently in parallel. Very
straightforward CUDA kernel is able to calculate 220
Billion backprojections per second on RTX 3090 Ti GPU.
This is very respectable speed considering that each
backprojection requires square root and complex
exponential (which can be calculated with just sin and
cos). I'm sure that someone experienced with CUDA
programming could make this even faster as this doesn't
have any optimizations or approximations and is just the
direct algorithm implementation.

Autofocus

3D velocity
Integrate

3D position

Radar
Image formation measurements

Image entropy

Backpropagation

Adjust the learning rate

based on the maximum
position update

Max position change Yes Terminate

below threshold? optimization
No

Update velocity

Autofocus block diagram.

Positioning accuracy of the GPS and IMU isn't good

enough to form a high-quality image. Ideally, the position
should be known to a fraction of the wavelength, but
accuracy of the GPS isn't good enough. To achieve good
image quality, an autofocus algorithm is necessary to
focus the radar image using information from the radar
data.

The most commonly used autofocus algorithm is phase

gradient autofocus. It's simple and fast autofocus
algorithm that works by taking an unfocused radar image
as an input and solving for a phase vector that when
multiplied with the azimuth FFT of the image gives a
focused image. However, it doesn't work well in this case
since the azimuth beam is wide and the radar baseline is
long causing the focusing errors to be spatially
dependent.

I updated my previous backpropagation autofocus to use

PyTorch and made some improvements. This autofocus
algorithm works by forming the radar image, calculating
the gradient of the input velocity, and clipping the
learning rate to limit the maximum position change to a
predefined value. The input velocity is then updated
using a gradient descent optimizer. I found that using a
3D position doesn't work well, as it often tends to just
nudge each position in random directions. Instead, using
velocity and integrating it to position seems to yield much
better results. A small regularization term is also included
to minimize the distance between the optimized and
original positions, favoring smaller updates.

Adjusting the learning rate based on the maximum

position change makes it easier to set the optimizer meta
parameters. Instead of setting the learning rate directly,
maximum position update is given which is used to set
the learning rate.

This is very general autofocus algorithm that makes no

assumptions about the radar system, scene, or the flight
track. The obvious disadvantage is that it requires
forming the radar image many times making the already
slow image formation many times slower. Without the
fast GPU image formation this would be too slow to be
useful.

The autofocus algorithm is available on Github.

Measurements

Configuring the mission in ArduPilot Mission Planner.

The mission is programmed beforehand with the

ArduPilot Mission Planner. The drone will automatically fly
the programmed waypoints, there are also commands to
set the ROI (region of interest) so that antenna always
points towards it, and the radar measurement is started
with digicam configure command in the mission. It's
originally meant for configuring ordinary camera, but I
programmed the radar microcontroller to listen to it.
Using an existing command makes it easy to make the
radar work with the existing ArduPilot software.

Setting ROI, which is needed for spotlight imaging, needs

a patch to ArduPilot firmware. By default drone's front
will always point towards the ROI and there isn't a way to
configure it to point the antenna towards ROI instead.
The patch is available on the ArduPilot Github as a pull
request.

Drone in action.

The scene is a wide open field. There's about 1.5 km

distance to the forest at the antenna pointing direction.
The drone flies at 110 m altitude in a straight line for
about 500 m at 5 m/s velocity. The radar was configured
to transmit only VV polarization with 400 µs long sweep,
500 MHz bandwidth, and 1 kHz pulse repetition
frequency.

Range compressed raw data.

The range compressed (Fourier transformed) captured

data doesn't look very impressive. It doesn't look
anything like an image since due to the wide antenna
beam at each sweep many targets at different angles are
captured.

At the zero distance there is a large response from the

TX-RX leakage, then the next reflection is at 100 m
distance from the ground. Even though the antenna gain
at directly below is much smaller than at the beam
center, due to the angle of the reflection and close
distance, the reflection from directly below is very large.
At large distances reflections are mostly below the noise
floor of individual sweeps, but during image formation
many sweeps are integrated improving the signal to noise
ratio. Some large individual objects are visible and their
distance to the radar changes as the drone moves.

Recorded drone position and antenna pointing vector from

GPS and IMU. Note the unequal axes scale.

Ideally the track should have been a straight line but

there is some disturbances due to for example wind. The
drone is very light and even a slight wind can easily affect
it. The ROI was set quite far away there is only few
degree of change in the antenna pointing direction during
the measurement.
 SAR image without autofocus.

Above is the processed SAR image without autofocus in

pseudo-polar coordinates that the image formation uses
internally. It's pseudo-polar because angle axis is in sine
of radians instead of just radians, this is slightly more
efficient than ordinary polar coordinates. Image size is 6k
x 20k pixels using 51,200 sweeps.

Compared to the raw data it's a night and day. Various

geographical features can be now identified, but polar
format makes it hard to compare to the map.

SAR image without autofocus.

Cartesian coordinate image can be obtained by

projecting the pseudo-polar image to Cartesian grid. This
is very fast operation compared forming the image
directly on the Cartesian grid. The image is also aligned
so that north points up using the drone's electronic
compass measurements. Left corner is missing a small
patch of data due to the rotation.

The resulting image is still quite blurry. Clearly only relying

on the GPS and IMU positioning isn't good enough and
autofocus is needed to get a sharply focused image.

Autofocused SAR image.

After applying 30 iterations of the minimum entropy

gradient optimization autofocus, the image quality is
much better. Five iterations would have been probably
enough, but using more iterations does improve the
quality slightly. This does take several minutes since each
iteration requires calculating forward and backwards
pass of the backprojection.

Due to the low look angle, tall structures such as trees

cast long shadows. The image amplitude isn't
normalized, which is why it's brighter closer to the origin.
The antenna radiation pattern can be also visualized in
the image. The beam center is tilted slightly to the right,
and the antenna gain at the left side of the image is much
smaller due to it being farther from the beam center,
causing it to be dimmer.

SAR image detail comparison. Without autofocus (left) and

with minimum entropy optimization autofocus (right).

There is quite lot of detail in the resulting radar image

when zooming in. Comparing a 300 x 300 m patch, the
autofocused image reveals surface details of the field
that was just blur in the image without autofocus.

I also tried using phase gradient autofocus, but it doesn't

work well in this case. The result is very similar to the
image without autofocus.

The three lines at the bottom left are power lines. They
seem to be only visible in the image when the radar is
looking at them at 90 degree angle, at other angles the
reflectivity is so low that they are invisible.

Original and optimized velocity.

Comparing the drone velocity before and after

optimization the changes aren't very large. Along the
track and range direction velocity components are both
adjusted slightly and height direction velocity component
is basically unchanged.

Full polarization
measurement

Google maps screenshot of the SAR imaging area.

I also made another measurement at other location using

all four polarizations. The radar flies a linear track
autonomously as before, but now the radar quickly
switches between each of the four polarization switch
states. Sweep length was reduced to 200 µs, pulse
repetition frequency is 715 Hz for each polarization, and
other parameters are kept the same. Number of sweeps
in the image is the same 51,200.

Four SAR images with different polarizations.

The four polarizations look very similar. The main

differences are that cross-polarization images (HV and
VH) have weaker amplitude due to cross-polarization
component in general being smaller than the reflection of
the same polarization.

Polarized SAR image with autofocus.

Instead of looking at four different images for each

polarization, it's common to use RGB color channels for
different polarizations in the same image. In this colored
image it's easier to visualize how each target reflects
specific polarizations. The ground is tinted purple,
indicating that it reflects VV and HH polarization better
than the cross-polarized components. The same can be
seen on the buildings and in the light poles along the
road. Forest areas are colored white as they reflect all
polarizations about equally. However, since the effects of
the antenna radiation pattern and possibly slightly
different losses for different polarization switch states are
not calibrated some of the observed differences could be
attributed to the hardware. Better accuracy
measurements would require calibration.

The area with bunch of points around (200, 500) meters is

a some kind of garden of small trees each surrounded
with a metal wire mesh.

Picture at the ground at (-50, -80) m coordinates in the SAR

image looking towards negative Y-axis.

There was slight amount of snow on the ground during

the measurements. The visible picture is from the top of
the SAR image looking down. The small forest on the left
is the small patch of trees in the middle of the image.

VideoSAR

Drone waypoints for the octagonal flight path. Red marker is

the region-of-interest where drone points the antenna.

The previous measurements synthesized one high-

resolution image from a long baseline. It's also possible
to synthesize many images with small baselines from one
long measurement, and these many images can then be
turned into a video.

For the backprojection algorithm, the flight track doesn't

need to be linear and for this case I programmed the
drone to fly octagonal track while pointing the antenna at
the octagon's center.

Each frame has 1024 radar sweeps with 512 of them

overlapping with the previous frame. Since each frame
has less sweeps than the previous full images, the frames
are noisier and have worse angular resolution. The video
is sped up by about 10x. All four polarizations are used,
and the image colorization is the same as in the previous
polarized SAR image.

Frames are autofocused separately and there isn't any

alignment of adjacent frames, which causes the frames
slightly wobble or jump around occasionally. Corners of
the octagon are especially challenging for the image
formation since both along- and cross-range positions
need to be solved accurately for a good-quality image.
Angular resolution can also vary between frames as the
baseline length between the frames can vary, as only the
number of sweeps is the same between the frames.

Natural targets such as the ground and forest look very

similar at different frames, but at several points in the
video large reflections can be seen for example at bridge
and power lines when they are oriented at a 90-degree
angle to the radar. The bright spot that looks like it's
moving at the bridge is just glint from the railing. The
mismatch between antenna patterns of different
polarizations is also visible as the same target can have
slightly different color at the beam center or at the edge.

Imaging geometry

Radar look angle with 120 m flying height.

Without special permits, it's allowed to fly the drone at a

maximum altitude of 120 m. Usually, for SAR imaging,
the look angle is around 10 to 50 degrees. If the look
angle is close to 90 degrees (i.e., looking straight down at
the ground), the reflected power is high, but the range
resolution is poor as the distance to the radar is almost
the same for nearby locations. For low look angles the
range resolution is good, but due to the low grazing angle
the reflected power back to the radar is low. With
extremely low look angle the reflected power can be
about 10 to 20 dB lower than it would be compared to
more usual around 45 degree look angle reducing the
maximum distance the radar can see.

Another issue is shadowing caused by tall objects. For

instance, when flying at 120 m height, the grazing angle
at 2 km distance is only 3.4 degrees. A 10 m tall tree
casts 170 m long shadow at this low angle, making it
impossible to see any reflections from the ground after
the tall object. This is clearly visible in all of the
measurements. Especially in the full-polarization
measurement only the tops of the buildings are visible at
long distances.

Conclusion

Schematic of the radar (click to open).

The synthetic aperture radar drone can image at least up

to 1.5 km and likely even farther if flown higher. It weighs
under 1 kg including the radar, drone, and battery. The
system can capture HH, HV, VH, and VV polarizations. A
gradient-based minimum entropy autofocus algorithm is
capable of producing good good-quality images with a
wide antenna beam using only non-RTK GPS and IMU
sensor information. The total cost of the drone was about
200 EUR, 600 EUR for two radar PCBs, and about 10
months of my free-time after work. I'm very happy with
the performance of the system considering its low cost.

Differentiable GPU image formation library is released on

Github under MIT license. Schematic of the radar is also
available above.

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