Multichannel imaging with the AMBER FMCW SAR

An X-band Digital Array Synthetic Aperture Radar for a Short Range Tactical UAV is presented. The Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave radar principle in combination with digital beam forming over 24 receive channels is used to achieve low power and advanced imaging SAR capabilities on small platform. Novel SAR imaging modes are discussed, and some examples are given. Real-time processing for such a system becomes a challenging task, and a practical example of an approach using GPU processing is presented in this paper.