New Aerial Testbed for Sensors & Communications Devices
Researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) are developing an airborne testing capability for sensors, communications devices, and other airborne payloads. This aerial test bed, called the GTRI Airborne Unmanned Sensor System (GAUSS), is based on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) made by Griffon Aerospace and modified by GTRI. The project includes development, installation, and testing of a sensor suite. This suite consists of a camera package, a signals intelligence package for detecting and locating ground-based emitters, and a multi-channel ground-mapping radar. The radar is being designed using phased-array antenna technology that enables electronic scanning. Possible applications include using the signals intelligence package to locate people buried in rubble by searching for cell phone signals.
Transcript
00:00:07 we use an aircraft as a flying test bed it's designed to carry up several different types of payloads about 35 lbs worth of payload so we take it up so we can take uh Airborne measurements of uh radio frequency signals uh radar signals uh there's a goal in the future to use it to take liar sensors up so it's a lowcost test bed it gives us the ability to offer proof or principle tests to
00:00:32 customers at a price that's reasonable at a schedule that's reasonable if uh if a a customer went to one of the the current day UAV manufacturers and asked to put a specialty payload on one of their airplanes it would cost them a lot of money and it would take a lot of time we can be a very responsive very flexible asset to allow us to test lots of different things from the air we're
00:00:56 initially starting with RF based sensors we're talk we've got a intelligence package that we've flown on our first flight we're building a radar for it but there's really anything that will fit and within the aircraft and it doesn't take too much power we can fly we've got vision for flying uh different kinds of cameras infrared cameras electrooptical sensors of various sorts hyperspectral
00:01:20 sensors for a wide variety of potential missions not only uh dood and scientific but also perhaps for Missions would support Environmental emergencies and things like that agricultural sensing there's just about anything that will fit on the plane and uh and not be too heavy uh that where it makes sense to fly it from the air that'll be what it's useful for we are designing internally
00:01:43 within seal a four Channel radar system that will be on the next phase basically the next mission package for the airplane it be a very flexible radar with electronic steered antenna and very flexible waveform generator allows to do a lot of different missions with it do ground Imaging with a Sy itic aperture radar mode to moving Target indicator looking for vehicles and people moving
00:02:05 around on the ground and a lot of high resolution measurements uh coherent change detection things like that the radar will be a research tool and allow us to basically look at a lot of different missions and modes that that a sponsor might care about the the aircraft's uh readily available it's inexpensive to operate uh we've got qualified people to operate it we have
00:02:26 certificates authorization from the FAA to operate it at a couple of different locations so it's a lowcost approach to getting Airborne [Music] data