Open Source Radar Has Up to 20 KM Range
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Open Source Radar Has Up To 20 KM Range | Hackaday Skip to content Phased-array radars are great for all sorts of things, whether you’re doing advanced radio research or piloting a fifth-generation combat aircraft. They’re also typically very expensive. [Nawfal] hopes to make the technology more affordable with an open-source radar design of their own. The design is called the AERIS-10, and is available in two versions. Operating at 10.5 GHz, it can be built to operate at ranges between 3 or 20 kilometers depending on the desired spec. The former uses an 8 x 16 patch antenna array, while the latter extends this to a 32 x 16 array. Either way, each design is capable of fully-electronic beam steering in azimuth and can be hacked to enable elevation too—one of the most attractive features of phased array radars. The hardware is based around an STM32 microcontroller, an FPGA, and a bunch of specialist clock generators, frequency synthesizers, phase shifters, and ADCs to do all the heavy lifting involved in radar. Radar is something you probably don’t spend a lot of time thinking about unless you’re involved in maritime, air defence, or weather fields. All of which seem to be very much in the news lately! Still, we feature a good few projects on the topic around these parts. If you’ve got your own radar hacks brewing up in the lab, don’t hesitate to let us know. 23 thoughts on “ Open Source Radar Has Up To 20 KM Range ” Is that even legal in most of the world? Radio emissions are very controlled in most countries, I imagine that blasting the environment with microwaves is probably not going to go too well. Report comment Reply Good questions! On shortwave, illegal over horizon radar transmissions caused lots of noise (still do). Report comment Reply As a ham I can use the 3cm band 10.0 – 10.5 ghz. We are not authorized to use pulse emission on this band specially. In the US we are authorized to use up to 1500w, but I don’t think it’s a great idea. Report comment Reply I am pretty sure you would need a big boy license, not ham license, to actually use this thing. ~160 W pulsed at 10.5GHz Report comment Reply It’s a pretty liberal reading of the ham rules. Report comment Reply Where is there any mention of amateur radio in this or in any of the linked materials? No call sign mentioned either. Found via the linked Hackaday project, he’s an EE in Morocco, so he has no FCC issues at least. Report comment Reply I don’t know much about ARRL/FCC and the situation in the US. But generally speaking: Actually, many “rules” used to be recommendations by nature, originally. Such as bandwidth of an SSB signal or the band plan, which says were people are recommended to do what kind of mode. However, these things were not set into stone. Amateur radio was intended to be experimental, after all. In the past, for example, 8 second SSTV was used during normal conversations rather than on a dedicated SSTV frequency. Also because it had a different purpose. Sharing images of operator, shack etc instead of sending QSL card-like images with RST reports and 73s. Anyway. The basic idea behind recommendations was that hams are self-policing and have enough reasoning not to disturb others. That’s why they are allowed to build and modify transceivers, the competence had been earned when passing ham exams. The recommendations meant good and was reasonable often, but its nature allowed for a bit of deviatation. And there were good reasons, sometimes. The 3,579 MHz frequency in 80m band was popular because NTSC color carrier crystals with 3,579 MHz were mass produced and readily available. That’s why man hams used that frequency for all sorts of experiments, not just telegraphy in CW or for QRP activity. It was useful for, say, r/c remotes/receivers or similar. Anyway, the main concern for treating them as rules is/was that hams might cause unintentionally interference. But as long as they were csreful and they didn’t cause trouble, then everthing was in line with the amateur’s code (aka ham spirit), after all. ;) That’s my understanding of the matter, at least. 73s Report comment Reply Hopefully your government doesn’t replay with anti radiation, radar seeking ordinance Report comment Reply You might find yourself in “HARM’s” way! Report comment Reply … or worse, ordnance! ;^) Report comment Reply “ham” radio license does not apply. They’re going to need a specific category -> radiolocation license (ie. for RADAR, which is what this is). Falls under Part 90 regulations, not Part 97. Report comment Reply Operating at 10.5 GHz … bunch of specialist clock generators, frequency synthesizers, phase shifters, and ADCs to do all the heavy lifting involved in radar. sounds like description of Starlink dish, wonder how hackable those are Report comment Reply i have pile of old DirectTV dishes — i’ve already used one as a fairly effective audio telescope and would like other ideas. they’re too small for much 2.4 GHz work Report comment Reply You use it as an audio telescope… 3.5kHz sound in air makes for 10cm in wavelength, 500Hz is 69cm. If that works even in the slightest, 2.4GHz will also work to some degree, as it works out to 12.5cm. Standard parabolic reflector formulas will tell you a 50cm dish will produce almost 20dB gain at 2.4GHz. Report comment Reply At least not for radar purposes… Uplink and downlink are spaced 4GHz apart, and presuming there are front end filters on the RX side, you’re not going to enjoy replacing over a thousand front end filters. Report comment Reply 100W homebrew radar seems like something which may get various government agencies very angry with you. Report comment Reply And your teeth have never been whiter Report comment Reply 9 out of 10 beekeepers agree it’s not normal to put honey on your scrotum. Report comment Reply I see this most useful for spotty NEXTRAD coverage…. maybe just below cameras atop cell phone towers in hilly terrain. Dixie Alley has a lot of hills….and as storms near big radar sites, ground clutter can become an issue. Report comment Reply Is there any way to filter out articles like this one that are based on LLM slop? Hackaday writers can’t get enough of it, apparently. Report comment Reply In the short term, yes (go read another blog). In the long term, no. AI passes the Turing test now, so the internet will shortly be flooded with false humans and will have to be abandoned unless you enjoy wasting your time talking to the simulacrum. Turns out that automation devalues the thing it replaces; who could have predicted this? Report comment Reply I wonder if this would pick up incoming Iranian warheads and spent stages. We have seen some pretty cool space intercepts right around sundown where it is dark at ground level but space is still sunlit above the Kerman line. like an expanding faint ball and ~30-40 sec later something or a bunch of crap re-entering. Report comment Reply Leave a Reply Cancel reply Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. ( Comment Policy ) This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. 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