TECHNOLOGY AREAS: Electronics

The technology within this topic is restricted under the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR), which controls the export and import of defense-related material and services. Offerors must disclose any proposed use of foreign nationals, their country of origin, and what tasks each would accomplish in the statement of work in accordance with section 3.5.b.(7) of the solicitation.

OBJECTIVE: Numerous tactical systems are developing that employ Electronically Scanned Array (ESA) technologies that have severe performance design constraints such as system performance, weight, size, cost, power consumption as well as functioning properly during hostile or friendly exposure. RF-Photonic technologies are being developed for the Telecom industry as well as high performance technologies being established by DARPA and ONR. Innovative concepts that propose Architectures for waveform/signal generation, true-time-delay (TTD) beamforming, signal distribution and sensor applications that improve system performance or system test are sought. The architectures should focus on Navy system insertion targets and the proposed approach shall evaluate and identify how the architecture, components, links and sensors being developed will be robust enough to function under the environmental constraints of military systems as well as reducing weight, size, power consumption, thermal management and interconnectivity of existing hardware used in the system.

DESCRIPTION: Current generation ESA architectures have large numbers of elements and associated power, weight, size and interconnectivity. RF-Photonic components and links used in commercial telecom systems and the ONR/DARPA initiatives to establish high performance RF-Photonic components can be utilized in waveform/signal generation, TTD beamforming and signal distribution to significantly increase the performance of ESAs. Such ESAs would exhibit lower susceptibility to electromagnetic interference, and the power, thermal dissipation, interconnects, size and weight can be decreased by > 2X.

The intended proposals will define architectures that are focused on existing or contemplated Navy ESAs or systems. The viability of the architecture performance and its ability to provide system performance improvements of > 2X as identified above as well as assessment of the robustness of the technologies proposed to meet the environmental and operational of their intended application.

PHASE I: Perform a feasibility study for an innovative architecture, component and/or sensor. This initial development effort should demonstrate a photonic circuit concept capable of providing increased radar performance with 2X reduction in size, weight, power and thermal dissipation that is robust enough to meet Navy application temperature ranges and environmental specifications for the system that this architecture is targeting for transition. Project risk and technology development needed is to be defined during the Phase I study.

PHASE II: Develop a prototype photonic circuit, architecture, component and/or sensor. Demonstrate the performance increase provided by the hardware over the current radar technology performance with 2X reduction in size, weight, power and thermal dissipation that is robust enough to meet Navy application temperature ranges and environmental specifications.

PHASE III: Production of robust, application-ready, photonic interconnections, components and subsystem to transition into the Navy ESA systems that the proposal targets. Construct and demonstrate photonic technologies that are suitable for system insertion both through improved system performance parameters and capable of operating in application temperature ranges and environmental conditions.

PRIVATE SECTOR COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL/DUAL-USE APPLICATIONS: Photonic interconnections, components, sensors and subsystems enabling higher performance ESA would find numerous applications in military systems as well as commercial systems for transportation systems.

REFERENCES:
1. M.W. Beranek, "Fiber optic interconnect and optoelectronic packaging challenges for future generation avionics," Proceedings of SPIE, vol. 6478, 2007.

2. http://www.darpa.mil/mto/programs/aosp/pdf/pappert.pdf

3. http://www.darpa.mil/mto/programs/aosp/pdf/goutzalis.pdf

KEYWORDS: ESA, Radar, EW, RF-Photonic, sensor, test.

** TOPIC AUTHOR (TPOC) **

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