Arrays at Commercial Timescales Technical Area 2 (ACT TA2)

In BAA-13-26 DARPA solicited innovative research and development (R&D) proposals to create electromagnetic interface arrays capable of being fielded at timescales paced by rapidly advancing commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) electronic components, i.e., Arrays at Commercial Timescales (ACT). Today's electromagnetic systems increasingly use antenna arrays to provide unique capabilities, such as multiple beam forming and electronic steering, that are important for a wide variety of applications, e.g., communications, signal intelligence (SIGINT), radar, and electronic warfare. However, the widespread use of arrays has come at a severe cost in terms of the system development time and the ability to upgrade capabilities in the field. While the commercial market has set the pace of the evolution of electronic systems, the development of military electronics has a cadence that lags behind the design and fielding cycles of commercial equipment. For example, a fielded military system based on decade-old electronics (e.g., a Xilinx Virtex 2 FPGA) has a small fraction of the capabilities of a system based on 2012 components (e.g., a Xilinx Virtex 7). In particular, the performance gap is widening between the RF capabilities of a fielded military system and the continuously improving digital electronics surrounding the system. A system with static RF or analog features cannot leverage the advancements of the underlying digital electronics and, therefore, will exhibit fixed capability in an evolving threat space. It is imperative to define a path toward shorter design cycles and infield updates. Research must push past the traditional barriers that lead to 10-year array development cycles, 20- to 30-year static life cycles, and costly service life extension programs.

Array programs within the government tend to constitute a unique (i.e., highly targeted one-off) design effort with little consideration for design re-use. ACT will develop a separable building block asset in which as much as 70% to 80% of an array's development cycle cost is built-in.

The Boeing Company proposes to build a novel Radio Frequency (RF) Phased Array Antenna (PAA) composed of reconfigurable wideband elements. For this program, the device will be scaled for configurability within the 2-12 GHz frequency range but this technique could be scaled to other frequency bands as well. This contract proposes a reconfigurable array which can be modified in the field to support common module changes or emergent mission requirements. Reconfigurable arrays have persistent challenges in four main technological categories: The array antenna element performance, realizable and reliable low loss switches, the means to control the switches without impacting array RF performance and challenging fabrication of interconnect structures. These are not decoupled as each category impacts and interacts the other two.