To obtain spectrum dominance the U.S. Navy needs to make use of all the Radio Frequency assets on their SWAP-constrained platforms. Thus it is critical that the apertures available can be used as effective active and passive radar, high-data-rate communications, ELINT/SIGINT, ESM and Electronic Protection (EP) and Electronic Warfare (EW) systems. Integrating these capabilities into a single multi-function wideband adaptive aperture has the potential to improve mission performance while reducing size, weight, power. The proposed program will produce a clean-sheet radar design that takes advantage of new solid-state transmitter, arbitrary waveform generator and high-performance embedded computing technologies. To take advantage of the new RF and digital hardware and enable the multifunction capability the proposed program will evaluate and develop new techniques are needed to effectively perform the desired wide range of radio frequency missions.
Benefit: The maritime radar / multi-function RF system design that emerges from the proposed program will provide the U.S. Navy with better performance for the core maritime surveillance mission currently performed by the AN/APY-10 radar on the P8 aircraft and a whole set of new Radio Frequency capabilities that will enhance mission performance in both benign and contested RF environments. The resulting system is applicable to a wide range of military, civil and commercial customers.
Keywords: Multi-Function Radio Frequency Systems, Multi-Function Radio Frequency Systems, maritime radar
