High Directivity STAR Apertures with Fixed and Agile Beams at Millimeter Waves
Abstract
ABSTRACT: University of Colorado Boulder (UCB), specifically the Antenna Research Group (ARG), shallresearch, develop, and demonstr"ate new fixed- and agile-beam millimeter wave monostatic simultaneous transmit and receive (STAR) antenna system architectures witho"ut frequency-, space-, time-, beam, or polarization-multiplexing. Most of the single aperture STAR research has been performed at lo""wer frequencies, whereas at millimeter waves only the bistatic systems were considered. High isolation between TX and RX channels gr""eater than 60dB in the antenna domain, gain above 20dBi, and effective isotropic radiated power (EiRP) of more than 10kW areenvisio"ned. Beam scanning over +/-45deg wide elevation angles using electronic or mechanical beam control is also sought. The main emphasis" shall be on 18-50GHz range; however, approaches to extend the developed concepts to V-, W-bands, and beyond shall also be investiga""ted. If successful, this research has potential to dramatically impact future implementations of electronic warfare (EW) and radio f""requency (RF) front-ends. Therefore, the main objective is to researchnovel concepts in highly directive STAR antenna and array con""figurations that will lead to fixed and beam-steered apertures with gold-STAR capability at illimeter-waves. Wide bandwidth,high gai""n, high power, and beam steerable RF electronics with full-duplex functionality is of great interest for future EW systems aimed to"" simultaneously support electronic attack and electronic support functions with a single aperture. In particular, achieving monostat"ic STAR antenna systemis extremely challenging due to the self-interference. Typical STAR communication systems require the self-in"terference suppression above 100dB, while the high power EW systems may need more than 140dB of isolation. To obtain necessary STAR"" capability, the multiple decoupling techniques need to be applied in digital, analog, and antenna domains. In digital and analog do""mains, injection of tapped TX signal into the RX channel with proper magnitude and phaseadjustments is typically applied. In the an""tenna domain, circulators, near-field cancellation, and polarization-multiplexing are often sought. To achieve necessary isolation i""n antenna domain without frequency-, time-, or polarization-multiplexing, ARG proposes novel, analog, monostatic RF front-end archit"ectures. These architectures rely on geometric symmetry of antenna and phase progression in beam forming network (BFN) to cancel the interference signal from TX to RX channel. The goal is to achieve over 60dB isolation over a wide bandwidth at millimeter-waves. Combining the proposed architectures with analog and digital cancellation layers may provide high enough isolation to enable STAR EW s"ystem. To permit beam scanning over wide field-of-view, the non-segmented monostatic phased array, mechanically and electronically s""teered aperture, andmulti-beam Luneburg lens shall be considered. The architectures ARG shall develop are highly directive front-en"ds of single aperture monostatic STAR EW systems. High power handling capability shall also be considered. Under the ONR funded JCREW pr ogram #N00014-10-C-0467~"Multifunctional Arrays and Frequency Independent Antennas (MAFIA),~ the ARG team hasshown for the first time that frequency indepen""dent antennas, commonly used for electronicsupport, can be developed to deliver kWs of EiRP without any degradation in their electr""icalperformance over multi-octave bandwidths. Moreover, under the ONR funded 6.1 program#N000141310537 ~High-Power Subhyperband An""tennas and Arrays,~ ARG team prototyped endfirebeam steering antenna system for directed energy use and developed electro-thermal m""odelsof high power antennas. With e
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Sep 29, 2017
- Source ID
- N000141712882
Entities
People
- Dejan S. Filipovic
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- Regents of the University of Colorado
- United States Navy