PhD Studentship - Distributed Radar Imaging from Airborne Platforms in Birmingham

There is growing UK and international interest in networked sensing and autonomous collaborative platforms, where multiple airborne sensors co-operate to collect and exploit data. In contrast to single-platform radar systems, distributed Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) architectures offer increased flexibility and resilience, more rapid environmental mapping, improved spatial coverage and enhanced information extraction through spatial diversity. Despite this potential, distributed SAR introduces significant challenges at the systems level. These include time and phase synchronisation under stringent size, weight, power and cost constraints, accurate relative positioning and motion knowledge across platforms, coordinated data acquisition strategies, and the development of SAR image formation algorithms suitable for multi-static and distributed geometries.

Understanding the performance limits of such systems, including sensitivity to synchronisation errors, geometry, transmit time, and partial sensor availability, remains an open research area, particularly when grounded in experimental hardware rather than purely theoretical models. The PhD aims to conduct underpinning research on the system design, signal processing, and experimental validation of distributed SAR for airborne platforms. The core aim is to design, analyse, and experimentally evaluate distributed SAR architectures for airborne platforms, with emphasis on systems-level performance, synchronisation, geometry, and image formation. This aim will be fulfilled through a balanced, systems-level study combining numerical modelling, simulation and experimental testing.

The PhD objectives are thus to:

• Analyse distributed and multi-static SAR architectures for airborne platforms, including trade-offs between centralised and decentralised data collection and processing approaches.
• Investigate time, frequency, and phase synchronisation requirements for coordinated SAR data acquisition.
• Analyse platform positioning, relative motion, and geometric effects on distributed SAR image formation.
• Derive distributed SAR image formation algorithms, informed by system-level requirements identified through modelling and analysis.
• Validate findings and assess performance limits experimentally through laboratory testing and field campaigns.

The approaches we will develop will be tested using bespoke distributed radar infrastructure and facilities available in our laboratory, which include compact airborne radar sensors. The academic supervision team have a track record of more than 20 years each on distributed radar research and lead a radar group of over 35 full-time researchers. The project is aligned to our strategic priority of expanding our critical mass on distributed radar, which is currently supported by prestigious initiatives such as a Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) Research Chair on distributed radar systems.

The project covers UK tuition fees and the standard UKRI PhD stipend and has an allowance for project-related expenses, including participation in trials and conference attendance. It is co-funded by the School of Engineering at the University of Birmingham and Leonardo UK, who will additionally provide industrial perspective, radar-sensor domain expertise, and alignment with broader UK research efforts in networked sensing and collaborative platforms. The project will be supervised by Professor Michail Antoniou and Professor Marco Martorella.

Funding notes: Only Home (UK citizens) students are eligible for this kind of scholarship. Successful candidates will have an excellent background in Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Physics or a related subject area (first class degree or equivalent). We invite applications from highly motivated individuals, able to master complex subjects and eager to undertake research in a system-level approach with both theoretical and experimental thrusts of activities, publish research papers and advance research as part of a team of researchers working in the area.