Mono/Multistatic Mode-Configurable E-band FMCW Radar Transceiver Module for Drone-Borne Synthetic Aperture Radar

Abstract: Drone-borne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems are attractive for small and midarea applications due to easy and temporal deployment capability. In this paper, we present a 77GHz drone-borne multistatic frequency-modulated continuous-wave radar transceiver (TRX) which enables multiple drones to cooperate for SAR imaging by wirelessly sharing the reference chirp signal between the drones. The TRX can be configured in the monostatic or multistatic (master/slave) mode by integrated RF switches. The antenna module in this work includes microstrip comb-line and planar Yagi-Uda array antennas for SAR signals and wireless synchronization of the reference chirp signal, respectively. The fabricated radar TRX chip size, including PADs, is 2.20 mm2. From the on-ground measurement, the SAR module detected a metallic object up to 20 meters away with around 11.2-dB SNR in multi-static mode. The TRX consumes 0.92, 1.3 and 0.4 W for monostatic, multistatic master, and multistatic slave modes, respectively.