Developing a Drone-Based Synthetic Aperture Radar System for Imaging Near-Field Optically Obscured Environments

Rapid advancements in the field of remote sensing technology and improvements in modern data processing have transformed our ability to observe the world around us. Specifically, when combined with the flexibility and accessibility of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), these systems are able to rapidly deploy to areas of interest. With their ability to nondestructively survey large spatial scales unaffected by optical disturbances, such technologies have widespread applications. The MIT Beaver Works Summer Institute annually hosts the course “Unmanned Air Systems - Synthetic Aperture Radar” (UAS-SAR) to offer students the opportunity to explore radar imaging through a UAV-based approach. This paper reports the development of a UAV-based synthetic aperture radar (SAR) visualization system through this program with our expanded findings on both challenges and effective technological approaches, as well as an assessment of applications to flood response utilizing both UAV and SAR data collections.