Phase II year
2022
(last award dollars: 1685878955)
Phase II Amount
$1,723,748
The achievable network topologies and performance of the SDA Transport Layer will depend on the ability to deploy low SWaP, high-performance, and flexible laser communication terminals (LCTs). Beamsteering is one of the critical limiting technologies for LCTs that can deliver the necessary performance. Currently available beamsteering components drive a significant fraction of LCT SWaP, force challenging platform and network architecture tradeoffs, and simply cannot support the kind of advanced network topologies best suited for the operational demand. This proposal offers to complete a rapid and cost-effective high-fidelity demonstration of an emerging beamsteering technology, the Lightfield Directing Array (LDA), that has the potential to overcome current limitations and enable leap-ahead performance in terms of SWaP, dynamic performance, and dense multi-node networking. Together with partner General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS), this 18-month project will complete a high-fidelity LDA enabled LCT (LDA-LCT) HWIL testbed configuration, demonstrating newly enabled CONOPS and experimentally validating operational performance. Upon completion of the base effort, the technology and infrastructure is in place to proceed immediately to prototype flight demonstration and rapid operational deployment.
