Small Business Innovative Research Award

Topic Number: AF03-208
Proposal Title: A 71 to 86 GHz Digital Communications Transceiver with 5 GHz Instantaneous Bandwidth
Firm Name: Applied Radar, Inc.
Phase I/II: II
 
Note:
The work plan was change significantly from originally proposed concept due to a change in the mission requirements by the Air Force. The W-band communication requirement has been replaced with laser communication. The Phase II work plan for this topic was changed to develop a Ku-band wideband downconverter rather than a W-band downconverter. We have retained the original spirit of this topic in that we are still developing RF and digital hardware to process a wide instantaneous (> 1 GHz IBW) signal. We have just scaled the RF frequency to a different band that is currently of more interest to the Air Force.
 
Technical Abstract:

A W-band digital communications transceiver will be developed with 5 GHz instantaneous bandwidth utilizing the 71 - 76 and 81 - 86 GHz frequency spectrum recently allocated by the FCC. This project has both military and commercial applications for SATCOM and Point-to-Point digital communications using formats such as 1.25 Gbps and 10 Gbps Ethernet for extremely wideband data and video transmissions. It also enables more secure communications, at least on the receive side, because a frequency-hopping scheme can be implemented in software (so-called software radio) and hence is invisible to the receive hardware.

The hardware emphasis in this project is to use low-cost COTS components so that the technology is affordable in large quantities. If the transceiver cost could be reduced and if significant technical hurdles could be overcome in the wideband digital processing, then digital beamforming could conceivably be used for tracking and communicating with LEO satellites, as proposed in our Phase I effort.

The primary focus in this Phase II effort shall be on the development of 71 - 76 GHz SATCOM downlink receive hardware. We will also investigate development of 71 - 76 GHz transmit hardware as well as a 81 - 86 GHz transceiver for Pt-to-Pt and full-duplex SATCOM communications.