Microwave engineering design laboratories: C-band rail SAR and Doppler radar systems

National trends appear to indicate that student and faculty interest in electromagnetic principles and practices is waning. Ironically, given the current industrial emphasis on high-frequency communications, high-speed computational systems, and high-bandwidth interconnection requirements, we find ourselves in a situation where increasing numbers of engineers need to have a grasp of high-frequency fundamentals. To address this need, we have refocused the electromagnetic teaching laboratories in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Brigham Young University to provide students with relevant, motivational design experiences with microwave systems. Our current laboratories are based on a 6 GHz Doppler radar in our junior-level course, and a 6 GHz synthetic aperture radar (SAR) in the senior-level course. These laboratories focus on taking students through the entire design process, beginning with system-level engineering and moving through computer-aided design, fabrication, and testing. Because the end product is a functional, useful system, students can directly see the relevance of the experience as well as the associated theory taught in the accompanying course.