SBIR-STTR Award

As sensors become more software definable, the ability to add additional capabilities to them becomes desirable as SWaP is always a premium, especially on airborne platforms both manned and unmanned. The same can be said for apertures. The prevailing standard is that each sensor has its own aperture. In reality, that does not have to (and should not) be the case. In the high-band and low-band chassis designed for the Navys Triton platform as part of the Multi-INT system, Azure has architected a 16x12 fully non-blocking switch that connects to various aircraft apertures and downconverters and can route those to any tuner channel. For this effort, Azure plans to extend this approach to the C-RACAS (AN/ZPY-9) to provide high gain steerable beam outputs to the Multi-INT system to aid in both threat and friendly automatic radar identification in C-band. The added (and intended) benefit of this approach is that the C-RACAS aperture has significant performance benefits over the existing ISR SAA aperture on the Triton platform in that 5 to 6GHz frequency range. Our automated recognition capability along with the benefits of sharing aperture beams will be discussed in more detail in the technical approach.

Benefit:
Azure Summit is ideally positioned to rapidly transition our automatic recognition and aperture sharing technology to the Navy and the rest of DoD. Azures Switchblade family of Intelligent Transceivers was developed for NAVAIR PMA-290 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 use Switchblade hardware to demonstrate the feasibility of the or our recognition algorithm as it would be implemented in the Multi-INT system as well as integration of the artificial intelligence spectrum monitoring capability. The ability to rapidly classify co-channel emitters in the cluttered C-band also has significant value in the Commercial communications market. As the ISM and other frequencies within C-band become more saturated with competing emitter waveforms, this capability will allow co-located systems to be spectrally aware of their surroundings and make decisions on how and where to transmit to protect themselves and to prevent interference with other communications and/or radar systems.

Keywords:
SIGINT, SIGINT, Machine Learning, Radar, AESA, Automatic Recognition, Spectral Awareness, COMINT, Artificial Intelligence

As sensors become more software definable, the ability to add additional capabilities to them becomes desirable as SWaP is always a premium, especially on airborne platforms, both manned and unmanned. The same can be said for apertures. The prevailing standard is that each sensor has its own aperture. That does not have to (and should not) be the case. In the high-band and low-band chassis designed for the Navys Triton platform as part of the Multi-INT system, Azure Summit Technology, Inc. (Azure) has architected a 16x12 fully non-blocking switch that connects to various aircraft apertures and downconverters and can route those to any tuner channel. In this Phase II effort, Azure plans to extend this approach to the C-RACAS (AN/ZPY-9) to provide high gain steerable beam outputs to the Multi-INT system to aid in both threat and friendly automatic radar identification in C-band. The added (and intended) benefit of this approach is that the C-RACAS aperture has significant performance benefits over the existing ISR SAA aperture on the Triton platform in that 5 to 6 GHz frequency range. Furthermore, a large portion of this Phase II effort will consist of Azure developing real-time firmware to implement a real-time Spectrum Sharing capability based on automatic radar waveform recognition algorithms developed by our team.

Benefit:
The?anticipated benefits of using the high gain AN/ZPY-9 (C-RACAS) array for ESM?are summarized below:? The band covered by the C-RACAS antenna (C-Band 5-6 GHz) is densely populated with emitters that could be targets of interest.? The narrow beam of the C-RACAS antenna?also provides spatial interference mitigation in these challenging co-channel environments.?Compared?to?the?wider beam?width of?the?current apertures?(low gain spiral antennas) used for ESM, it is easy to see the potential utility for improved spatial processing.? The greater antenna gain of the C-RACAS also gives significant improvement in detection range?compared to the existing low gain spiral antennas.? The C-RACAS provides a wide area, forward-looking coverage, whereas the current ESM spirals are side-looking.?Using the C-RACAS array for ESM will thus fill a large coverage gap currently in the Tritons view. The primary anticipated benefit of real-time Spectrum Sharing via automatic threat and friendly radar waveform recognition is real-time spectrum compatibility with friendly ground radars and other friendly emitters as needed.

Keywords:
Radar, spectrum sharing, Electronic Support Measures (ESM), C-Band, Firmware, AN/ZPY-9, C-RACAS, Triton