Skip to main content
Microwave Earth Remote Sensing

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) at BYU

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 who employ students who have gone through the MERS lab SAR program.

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. We have been involved in the development of systems for both manned aircraft and UAV-based experiments. This work continues with commerical system manufactorers. We also do work in ground-based SARs studying vegetation response, avalanches, and landslides and in the development and analysis of SAR processing algorithms.

MERS Papers on SAR technology

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)

BYU microSAR (2004-2008)

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
  • Flew as part of the CASIE experiment on the NASA SIERRA UAV over the Arctic Ocean in 2009.
  • Sample images (in KMZ form) are available from this link.
  • D.G. Long, E. Zaugg, M. Edwards and J. Maslanik, "The MicroASAR Experiment on CASIE-09," Proceedings of the International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, pp. 3466-3469, Honolulu, Hawaii, 2010. (2.7 MB pdf)

Major Airborne SAR Experiments*

Slumgullion Slide (1996-1999)

  • Sensor: YINSAR (X-band)
  • Platform: Manned aircraft
  • Operational area: Slumgullion, Colorado
  • annual flights over 3 yeras
  • Selected Data

CASIE 2006

MIZOPEX 2013

  • Sensor: SlimSAR (X-band)
  • Platform: NASA SIERRA UAV
  • Operational area: Arctic Ocean north of Alaska
  • Limited data due to loss of platform.

*Selected projects only

Last updated: 2013