Jim Wight
Project Area: Radar Technologies
Project Title: Drone Based Radar for Monitoring and Directing Delivery Drones
Description: With the future of drone delivery services, some control of drone traffic will be required in order to prevent mid-air collisions. This problem will not be handled by Air Traffic Control. Instead it will be handled in a manner equivalent to street intersection traffic lights in the sky.
These 鈥渢raffic lights鈥 could be low power radar payloads on traffic controlling drones. When a potential drone collision is anticipated, the traffic controlling drone will transmit 鈥渇ly up 鈥 fly down鈥 instructions to the two delivery drones.
This project focuses on the key technologies needed to assemble a drone mountable short range radar system to provide the Delivery Drone Management. To achieve high range resolution and low prime power, the radar will be a Direct Sequenc Spread Spectrum radar, not a conventional Pulsed radar. And to achieve high Azimuth resolution, a rotating Mono-pulse antenna consisting of two 鈥渟quinted鈥 beams will be used.
The project focuses on the design of four major assemblies: the antennas and corporate feed, the transmitter and receiver microwave circuits, the phase locked carrier and spread spectrum 鈥渃hip鈥 clock generator, and the DSP for target detection and tracking.
This project will build upon the achievements of the Cap Stone project from 2025 /26, with the following tentative titles of the various sub-projects:
- Antennas and Corporate Feed
- Mircowave Transmitteer and Receiver Circuits
- Phase Locked Carrier and Code Synthesizers
- DSP for Target detection and Tracking
Desired Technical Skills
- Monopulse Antenna design
- Microwave Low Nise and Power Amplifier design
- Phase Locked Oscillator design
- Kalman Filter design
-
Project Title (2025-2026): Drone Based Short Range Surveillance Radar for Air Traffic Control of multiple Delivery Drones
Project Subtitles:
- Antennas and Corporate Feed (Monopulse Antenna, Passive Microwave Feed, Circulator Duplexer)
- Transmitter Circuits (Microwave Power Amplifier, Voltage Controlled Oscillator, Waveform Generator)
- Receiver Circuits (Low Noise Amplifier, Down Converter, Phae Locked Loop)
- Signal Processing (DSP, FPGA)
Desired Technical Skills:
- Analytical Skills
- Simulation Skills
- Component Selection, Procurement and Assembly Skills
- Test and Measurement Skills
Project Description
As package delivery by autonomous Drones becomes more prevalent, the possibility of mid-air collision between drones increases. Traditional Air Traffic Control will not monitor these low altitude vehicles. As a result a need arises for “traffic cop” drones to monitor and direct the motion of the delivery drones. If the “traffic cop” drone predicts a probable collision it will send a Fly Up – Fly Down command to the delivery drones This project will design, analyze, build and test a Mono-pulse FM-CW radar payload to be mounted on a “traffic cop” drone. This radar will measure the range and bearing to all delivery drones within its surveillance area, typically 5 Km radius. The project is composed of four sub-projects. The first sub-project will design the waveform generator which tunes the Voltage Controlled Oscillator, which feeds the Power Amplifier (PA). The second sub-project will design the duplexer which connects to both the transmitter and to the receiver,. the mono-pulse corporate feed, and antennas. The third sub-project will design the Low Noise Amplifier (LNA), the Down Converter, and the Phase Locked Loop (PLL) narrow band filter. The fourth sub-project will Digitize the output from the PLL, compute the direction of arrival, and compute the range of all delivery drones within the surveillance area.