Denys Inhul

teaching myself about: radar and antennas

date: May 17 2026

so I was watching this wonderful video about how dual-polarization weather radars work

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAYsncEeA6Y

and became more interested about how all this works in general. I’ve built drones, and played around with basic RF controllers, LoRa and stuff, but never really understood how radio, antennas and radars work fundamentally. so I figured I would learn.

I was also quite interested in what kind of interesting radar I can build myself, so each chapter is written with a main question in mind.

  1. what are the different kinds of radars are there?
  2. can a radar detect a person’s heartbeat through walls?
  3. how do walls effect EM transmission and SNR?
  4. what are the fundamentals of converting current into EM waves?
  5. why are antenna sizes in multiples of λ/2, and can they be different?
  6. the fundementals of using array of antennas?
  7. how do I shape the beam I want (narrower main lobe, lower sidelobes)?
  8. how do I actually go from theory to a working DIY phased array, and what does it cost?

some awesome resources I found online along the way: