Environmental monitoring with the imaging MIMO radars MIRA-CLE and MIRA-CLE X

Several applications need imaging sensors for environmental monitoring which can continuously observe an area in a 24/7 mode independently from the weather and other atmospheric obscuration like dust and smoke. Imaging MIMO radar fulfills these requirements and enables the opportunity of low-cost and robust imaging systems by synthesizing many virtual antennas out of just a few real ones. MIRA-CLE is a fully configurable and expandable experimental MIMO radar in Ka-band while MIRA-CLE X works in X-band and is intended to be a low-cost experimental system for long range applications. This paper presents both MIMO radar systems and shows and discusses first imaging results of MIRA-CLE X.