Open-Source Radar Boasts 20km Range
Hackaday featured an open-source phased-array radar system with up to 20 km range. While not plug-and-play for maritime ops, the design is instructive for engineers interested in custom, low-cost sensor networks. It's useful for testbed development or augmenting commercial satellite/radar feeds in experimental fusion stacks.
The AERIS-10, designed by Nawfal, operates at 10.5 GHz and comes in two versions: a 3km range version with an 8x16 patch antenna array and a 20km range version using a 32x16 array. This phased-array radar system allows for fully electronic beam steering in azimuth, and can be modified to enable elevation steering as well. The hardware incorporates an STM32 microcontroller, an FPGA, specialized clock generators, frequency synthesizers, phase shifters, and ADCs. The AERIS-10 system also utilizes Pulse Linear Frequency Modulation (LFM). Nawfal aims to provide an affordable alternative to expensive commercial radar systems, which can cost upwards of $250,000. The AERIS-10 combines modern SDR technology with an innovative system to deliver phased array performance at a fraction of the cost, with open APIs for custom applications.
