DIY Coffee-Can Radar

David Schneider's Coffee-Can Radar - RF Cafe Website

"Build a Small Radar System Capable of Sensing Range, Doppler, and Synthetic Aperture Radar Imaging." That is the title of a course offered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory. It is a 3-week class in the design, fabrication, and test of a laptop-based radar sensor capable of measuring Doppler, range, and forming synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. Teams of three students will receive a radar kit and will attend a total of 5 sessions spanning topics from the fundamentals of radar to SAR imaging. A final SAR imaging contest will test your ability to form a SAR image of a target scene of your choice from around campus; the most detailed and most creative image wins. However, it is not necessary to attend the class to build the radar because all of the material is available online for garage (or basement, attic, closet, etc.) experimenters. David Schneider did just that and wrote an article about his experience for the November 2012 edition of IEEE's Spectrum magazine. Trekkies will appreciate the reference therein.

Posted November 2012

Windfreak Technologies Switchable Filterss - RF Cafe Website

RF Cafe began life in 1996 as "RF Tools" in an AOL screen name web space totaling 2 MB. Its primary purpose was to provide me with ready access to commonly needed formulas and reference material while performing my work as an RF system and circuit design engineer. The World Wide Web (Internet) was largely an unknown entity at the time and bandwidth was a scarce commodity. Dial-up modems blazed along at 14.4 kbps while tying up your telephone line, and a lady's voice announced "You've Got Mail" when a new message arrived...