Design Team develops portable Doppler radar system
A team of three mechanical engineering and two electrical engineering students developed a radar system that is small enough to be portable.
The goal of this effort was to provide radar resources to small communities or those living in remote areas to identify potentially dangerous storm systems nearby. The GU Doppler RADAR team built a proof of concept/prototype of a small-scale Doppler RADAR system that utilizes a pair of custom-made 2.4 GHz horn antennas -- one transmitting and the other receiving -- to track solid objects. These antennas can be scaled in a production system to allow the tracking of storm clouds.
The system can also be adapted through the addition of a passive parabolic dish antenna providing the ability to monitor RADAR signals produced by the National Weather Service. A servomotor-controlled mount capable of 360-degree horizontal rotation and up to 90-degree vertical rotation allows automated aiming of the antennas. A micro-processor interprets the resulting signal into a usable display of the surroundings.