Toward Fully Electrically Reconfigurable Communication System
Abstract
Reconfigurable RF and microwave systems are continuously being demanded to deliver improved performance and increased agility in functionality for Navy’s platforms restricted in size and power to significantly improve access to the radio spectrum by enabling interoperability among multiple standards over multiple frequencies. Although technical solutions for reconfigurable radio architectures have been widely studied and successful demonstrated, current technologies have limitations in wide continuous tunability range, flexibility, and power handling capability. This proposal provides an innovative technology from the unique aspect of smart material and advanced additive manufacturing technology to revolutionize Navy’s communication system and assure critical Navy mission accomplishment. This proposal aims at developing fully electrically reconfigurable RF and microwave technologies through interdisciplinary research at the material, device, circuit, and system level. The proposed electrically tunable engineered material is implemented with multiple layers of ferromagnetic and ferroelectric thin films nanoscale patterns or integrated on common RF substrate. The proposed substrate has general and localized electrically tunable RF characteristics (e.g., permittivity and permeability) with DC voltage and current. Arbitrary tunable RF components on the proposed engineered material can be implemented together with the current state of the art design techniques. This is the first comprehensive reconfigurable RF and microwave solution from the perspective of smart material with both electrically tunable inductance and capacitance density.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jul 29, 2020
- Source ID
- N001741910015
Entities
People
- Guoan Wang
Organizations
- United States Navy
- University of South Carolina