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Indoor Ground Testing of a Small UAS Sense and Avoid Airborne Doppler RadarThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) project is researching prototype technologies needed to ensure safe integration of UAS operations into the National Airspace System (NAS). Within the UTM Concept of Operations, UAS would be equipped with on-board Sense and Avoid (SAA) technology to continually monitor for manned and unmanned aircraft in its vicinity while operating beyond visual line of sight in uncontrolled airspace. To support this effort, a candidate commercially available 24.5 GHz Doppler radar was selected and evaluated to determine if the technology could reliably support minimum requirements for SAA applications of small UAS (sUAS). Indoor ground tests were conducted inside the NASA Langley Research Center’s Experimental Test Range (ETR) from a stationary platform to evaluate the Doppler radar performance characteristics and gain operational proficiency before the radar was authorized to transmit outdoors. A high speed linear rail system was developed for the radar evaluation and was shown to be an effective method to generate Doppler radar targets of known radar cross section. The accuracy of the range and velocity reported by the radar was shown to be dependent on the Kalman filter state variance parameter settings. Antenna measurements were collected with the radar installed both on and off a sUAS to quantify the relative antenna gain, beam width and side lobe levels of the radar’s Metamaterial Electronically Scanning Array (MESA) antennas at boresight and extreme field of view pointing vectors. The relative antenna gain measured 2.6 dB lower at extreme field view angles compared to the boresight radiation pattern.
Document ID
20190026497
Acquisition Source
Langley Research Center
Document Type
Technical Memorandum (TM)
Authors
Szatkowski, George N. (NASA Langley Research Center Hampton, VA, United States)
Ticatch, Larry A. (Analytical Mechanics Associates, Inc. Hampton, VA, United States)
Morris, Christopher M. (Analytical Mechanics Associates, Inc. Hampton, VA, United States)
Cavone, Angelo A. (Analytical Mechanics Associates, Inc. Hampton, VA, United States)
Date Acquired
June 19, 2019
Publication Date
May 1, 2019
Subject Category
Aircraft Design, Testing And Performance
Aircraft Communications And Navigation
Report/Patent Number
L-21021
NASA/TM–2019–220280
NF1676L-32969
Funding Number(s)
WBS: 334005.05.10.07.01
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Public Use Permitted.

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