Multi-Mission, Autonomous, Synthetic Aperture Radar

Unmanned aerial systems (UASs) have become a critical asset in current battlespaces and continue to play an increasing role for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions. With the development of medium-to-low altitude, rapidly deployable aircraft platforms, the ISR community has seen an increasing push to develop ISR sensors and systems with real-time mission support capabilities. This paper describes recent flight demonstrations and test results of the RASAR (Real-time, Autonomous, Synthetic Aperture Radar) sensor system. RASAR is a modular, multi-band (L and X) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging sensor designed for self-contained, autonomous, real-time operation with mission flexibility to support a wide range of ISR needs within the size, weight and power constraints of Group III UASs. The sensor command and control and real-time image formation processing are designed to allow integration of RASAR into a larger, multi-intelligence system of systems. The multi-intelligence architecture and a demonstration of real-time autonomous cross-cueing of a separate optical sensor will be presented.