Traditionally, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems were large and expensive to build and to operate. Intending to show that this does not need to be the case, starting in the early 1990's BYU begain designing and building a number of small, low-cost SAR systems, including interferometric SAR systems. The success of these systems has lead to their commercial development in a number of companies.

Our first truck-mounted SAR systems were built in 1991, the first airborne system in 1993, the first rail-sar in 1999, and the first UAV system in 2004.

MERS Papers on SAR

Major SAR Systems

YSAR (1994-1996)

• Center frequency: 2 GHz
• Bandwidth: 200 MHz
• pulsed operation, 1 kHz PRF
• Flown over archeological sites in Israel in Sept.1996

YINSAR (1995-2003)

• Center frequency: 9.2 GHz
• Bandwidth: 200 MHz
• Interferometric, 1 m baseline
• pulsed operation, 1/1.2 kHz PRF
• SHORT YINSAR SYSTEM DESCRIPTION (2 MB pdf file)
• YINSAR INFORMATION PAGE
• YINSAR IMAGES

BYU microSAR (2004-2008)

• Center frequency: 5.4 GHz (base unit)
• Bandwidth: 80-130 MHz
• LFM-CW with integral storage
• BYU microSAR SYSTEM DESCRIPTION (866 kB pdf file)

nuSAR (2007+)

• Center frequency: 1.7, 9.75 GHz
• Bandwidth: 100-500 MHz
• Dual frequency, dual channel
• pulsed operation, 300-25 kHz PRF

microASAR (2008+)

• Center frequency: 5.4 GHz
• Bandwidth: 160 MHz
• LFM-CW with integral storage
• Sample CASIE-09 microASAR data set and code

Last updated: 2011