SBIR-STTR Award

The research and development (R&D) costs and more importantly the projected production costs of airborne fighter aircraft, multi-mode radars are increasing significantly. Albeit, the performance and reliability are also increasing. Ways reducing these costs without reducing the other CRISP (Cost, Reliability, Installation, Supportability and Performance) costs are necessary. The radar receiver, processor, controls and display functions are not the high payoff areas for cost reduction. This leaves the high power RF and antenna section. This proposal delineates ways to reduce cost significantly in these areas by switching from the current high power MMIC approach to a hybrid approach using Microwave Power Modules (MPMs) and also increasing the ECM capabilities through increased bandwidth. Aside excursion investigating a wide band, polarization agile, MPM antenna array will also be conducted and costs defined

Keywords:
microwave power module airborne radar mpm eccm polarization variability active element radar

The overall objective of Phase II of this SBIR program is to evaluate and demonstrate a methodology that proves that microwave power modules (MPM's), as presently configured or as they may have to be modified, can be used in an embedded transmitter-array architecture for use in advanced airborne radars. The technical objectives are twofold; one involving the design of a complete system/subsystem architecture and the other involving the development of a hardware feasibility test-bed. The test-bed will be designed, fabricated, and tested during Phase II and will demonstrate that four (4) MPM's can be embedded in a phased array and coherently feed four (4) subarrays which, in turn, will generate a coherent radiated pattern with a substantial effective radiated power (ERP). The system/subsystem architecture that will be generated is for a subsequent potential effort to build an engineering model of a complete front-end transmitter-array antenna for an advanced airborne radar.During Phase I, a top level architecture was defined. It was shown that the size of MPM's is compatible with subarray stacking in a phased array. In addition, PMP's provide excellent power efficiency thereby minimizing prime power and cooling problems. In Phase II, production-cost models will be generated to show that MPM's offer a very low and attractive cost per watt when used in an embedded phased array configuration. Also during Phase I, an efficient method for providing variable transmit polarization was developed. This involved combining the MPM's with a bi-polar transmit subarray in the overall array architecture. The same coherent operation of PMP's is required for this methodology as for operation in the phased array. During Phase II, the feasibility of the variable polarization methodology will also be demonstrated.