Novel Mobile Troposcatter Communications Antennas Enabled by Rapidly Reconfigurable Phased Arrays
Abstract
The overall objective of this project is to develop mobile troposcatter communications antenna technologies with advanced beam pointing, tracking, and stabilization capabilities. The proposed troposcatter antennas take advantage of wideband, electronically reconfigurable reflectarray antennas whose responses can be tuned extremely rapidly. In this project, we will investigate two specific embodiments of such phased arrays. These include: 1) a single reflector, fully-electronically reconfigurable reflectarray antenna; and 2) a dual-reflector system with a fixed primary reflector and an electronically reconfigurable sub-reflector. The proposed concepts represent modular antenna technologies that can bring additional capabilities to many existing troposcatter communications system byonly upgrading or replacing their antennas without making substantial changes to other system components. This is a critical feature of the proposed technologies, which is expected to facilitate their adoption in existing or future programs of record.To accomplish the proposed objectives, we will build upon our latest contributions in the area of electronically-reconfigurable reflectarray antenna design. In particular, we will use polarization-rotating reflectarray antenna designs with 2-bit phase quantization capability as the building block of the proposed troposcatter phased-array antennas. We will first enhance the tuning speeds of these phased-array antenna systems with the aim of achieving beam scanning speeds of several tens of nano seconds. Subsequently, we will design andoptimize the two candidate phased-array prototypes for operation at C-band with a center frequency of 5.9 GHz. Three beam pointing and tracking techniques that are expected to enable automatic tracking of the desired signal while compensating for the movements ofthe platform will also be investigated and their performances will be evaluated for each of the two design candidates. Finally, a full-scale prototype of the dual-reflector antenna and a small-scale prototype of the single-reflector antenna will be fabricated andexperimentally characterized.Successful execution of the proposed research project is expected to result in enhancing the performance and reliability of mobile troposcatter communications operating in harsh environments (e.g., rough seas). This will be accomplished by enabling precise beam pointing, tracking, and stabilization as well as rapid compensation of platform movements in mobile troposcatter communications systems. Furthermore, the innovative ideas proposed in this project are also expected to be of interest to various other communications and networking systems. They represent modular antenna technologies that are system and waveform agnostic. These technologies can bring additional capabilities to Naval communication systems by merely upgrading their existing directional antennas with the proposed ones, without needing significant modifications to the rest of the system. Finally, the proposed technologies are also expected to find other applications in shipboard radar systems, high-throughput microwave/mm-wave communication links, satellite communications, and long-range wireless power transfer.DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT A: Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- May 05, 2021
- Source ID
- N000142112387
Entities
People
- Nader Behdad
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of Wisconsin System