A portable primary radar for general aviation.

Area of Science:

• Aviation Technology
• Radar Systems Engineering
• Aerospace Safety

Background:

• General Aviation safety relies heavily on pilot situation awareness, particularly visual perception.
• Current technologies like Flarm require cooperative participation, leaving unequipped obstacles undetected.
• Advancements in radar hardware, driven by autonomous vehicle needs, enable smaller, more efficient systems.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and test the first portable primary radar system for enhanced General Aviation situation awareness.
• To create a lightweight, low-cost, and low-power radar solution.
• To focus on the software design crucial for the radar system's functionality.

Main Methods:

• Described the physical principles of radar sensing and scientific steps for situation awareness.
• Developed and integrated custom hardware and software for the portable radar system.
• Conducted a flight experiment involving a small aircraft and a stationary ground-based radar.

Main Results:

• The portable radar successfully detected a small aircraft up to a distance of at least 3 kilometers.
• Achieved 3D localization with an average error of 46 meters at a distance of 1000 meters.
• Demonstrated that applying a low-pass filter can further improve location estimation accuracy.

Conclusions:

• A portable primary radar system is feasible for improving General Aviation situation awareness.
• The developed radar system shows promising detection and localization capabilities.
• Future work will involve testing the radar system in a mobile, operational capacity.