Azures approach to own-ship interference mitigation combines multiple key innovations that together produce an interference mitigation solution with a low SWaP form factor that scales to the full range of PMA-299, PMA-262 and PMA-290 platforms and missions. Our baseline design employs an innovative analog RF Hybrid Adaptive Canceller (RFHAC) cascaded with a Digital Signal Processing Canceller (DSPC) capability, along with coordination and synchronization features that maximize ESM system probability of intercept while minimizing impact to RADAR missions and other interferer functionality. With Azure Summits Switchblade tuner being one of the primary ESM tuner targets on Triton, EP-3 and P-8 platforms, we have the unique ability to bring value to this solution space. Specifically, without impacting existing onboard ESM capability, we can implement digital cancellation techniques for those ESM personalities as well as provide real-time tuner information to the radar system and receive real-time radar information to affect coordination between the systems.
Benefit: Azure Summit is ideally positioned to rapidly transition our interference mitigation technology to the Navy and the rest of DoD. Azures Switchblade family of Intelligent Transceivers was developed for NAVAIR PMA-290 (Mr. David Wheeler david.j.wheeler1@navy.mil) and is the basis of the Navys Common Chassis as well as High-band and Low-band chassis. It is currently being integrated into EP-3, P-8, Triton, and Virginia Class submarines, and is under consideration for other platforms. Azure will be using Switchblade hardware to demonstrate the feasibility of the interference mitigation algorithms, however, because of the way the firmware and software was designed, the filters that will be needed for DSP cancellation techniques already exist in our tuners and make it trivial to apply those filter updates without impact to existing ESM personalities . Azure has already delivered 68 units of our Switchblade 6U Processor Card to the Navy and other agencies, along with 257 Switchblade Tuner Modules and 114 16x12 Non-Blocking Switch Matrix Cards. This mitigation approach also has significant value in the Commercial communications market. As the ISM and other bands become more saturated with various emitter waveforms, this capability will allow co-located systems to be fully functional at the same or similar frequencies without system modifications other than cable modifications to interface to Azures interference cancellation applique hardware.
Keywords: Radar, Radar, SIGINT, digital signal processing, interference cancellation, High Probability of Intercept
