Enabling Technologies for Electronic Warfare and Surveillance
Abstract
A modern battlefield has seen an increased role and reliance on resilient and flexible electronic support (ES) systems able to sense emissions over a wide spectrum while geolocating large and small targets moving at different speeds in air, ground, sea, and freshwater. Antennas, as eyes and ears of these systems, remain critical, and are often the enabling or limiting factor for electronic warfare (EW) dominance from low frequencies through millimeter wave range. The governing research hypothesis for this program is that the recent advancements in: (a) computational, (b) material, (c) signal processing, and (d) manufacturing technologies can lead toantenna system with characteristics enabling low-cost EW systems to be on par with the booming commercial and military information technologies. Therefore, the University of Colorado Boulder (UCB) proposes research on scalable, adaptable ES systems operating overultrawide bandwidths while achieving small size, weight, and low-cost. Improvements over the state of art of over 1,000 times shallbe demonstrated enabling new airborne, maritime, space, and land-based implementations. UCB shall demonstrate two low-cost antenna system enablers for standalone and distributed naval platforms requiring small volume (~3# dia ×3# height), e.g., Neptune payload. Specific research shall be organized in two tracks/tasks:Task 1: design and demonstration of a novel, 1-20+GHz small, lightweight, horizontally polarized dual-channel antenna system that exploits the unavoidable beam squint from a finite size ground to integrate two apertures into a single RF payload. When compared with the state of art sensor aperture developed on N00014-16-C-2001 Full Spectrum Staring ES Receiver with Instantaneous DF, over 10,000x combined improvement in field-of-view, gain, weight, size, and cost will be experimentally demonstrated. Integration with a software define radio and accuracy of various amplitude/phase/machine learning algorithms in the stand-alone and when operating over different sea surfaces for various wind speeds and associated sea states shall beresearched. Transmit options shall also be considered. Task 2: design and demonstration of a multi-beam, 20-50GHz, dual-polarized, horizon-scanning, phased array, enabled by an optimized designed for manufacturing in 3d printing Eaton lens, and planar focal planearray integrated with commercial off the shelf silicon integrated chips. The lens enables ray-bending such that each of the planar array feeds effectively creates a beam at the horizon. To further reduce the footprint, transformational optics shall be used to design a truly planar lens. The demonstrated front-end can be used for receiving and/or transmit/receive depending on the backing electronics. Compared to the conventional planar phased arrays, the proposed configuration enables scan through and below the horizon. When compared with wideband millimeter wave Lockheed Martin#s phased array fed reflectors, the size, weight, and cost are reduced by more than 5,000x. This system can be integrated within the same Neptune payload; however, it is readily applicable to other naval platform requiring small, low-cost sensors or distributed EW frontends. Though both configurations shall be researched and optimized for operation over the proposed bandwidths, significant efforts shall be made to show their scalability across the electromagnetic spectrum. Designs for low-cost manufacturing relying on 3d printing shall be carried out in parallel with the research on all articles. Design and adaptation for the full-in-band simultaneous transmit and receive shall also researched. The proposed configurations shall be built and demonstrated at least in a laboratory setting at UCB; however, if requested, ONR shall be supported in any/all types of additional demonstrations with recommended companies or government laboratories.Approved for Public Release.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Mar 08, 2024
- Source ID
- N000142412191
Entities
People
- Dejan S. Filipovic
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- Regents of the University of Colorado
- United States Navy