Fraunhofer Group for Microelectronics in cooperation with the Leibniz institutes IHP and FBH
FMD member institutes Fraunhofer FHR and IAF joined forces to develop an advanced, real-time synthetic aperture radar (SAR) – known as MIRANDA-94. The mm-wave system is a miniaturized radar sensor optimized for use in ultralight aircrafts. The radar is backed on the aircraft by a mechanical beam stabilization - using a programmable gimbal that allows linear and nonlinear trajectories to perform SAR imaging for various applications. The real-time evaluation for the MIRANDA-94 SAR images was developed in a multinational EU project. The SAR image depicts the compound of Fraunhofer FHR.
MIRANDA-94 operates at a center frequency of 94 GHz at a resolution of less than 15 cm. To achieve such high resolution, the system has to work with a bandwidth larger than 1 GHz. The high operational frequency and large bandwidth place great demands on the components of the RF transceiver, signal generation, and signal processing. Fraunhofer IAF drew on their sophisticated III-V semiconductor technologies to construct the mm-wave components for the transceiver module, while Fraunhofer FHR took responsibility for the system integration and applied its long-standing experience in measurement campaigns of airborne radar systems to the project.