DARPA Program Aims to Reduce Cost of Electronic Antenna Systems

摘要

Electronic antenna systems, which are used on aircraft and other military platforms for radar, communications and electronic warfare, are notoriously costly to both develop, maintain and upgrade. A Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program is seeking to sharply reduce the cost and years it takes to develop electronically scanned array antennas (ESA). "The DoD customer base has been requesting ESAs for years, but it has not previously been affordable," said Lee Paulsen, a principal electrical engineer at Rockwell Collins, which recently received a $10 million DARPA award to enhance the antenna designs with more versatile, digital versions. DARPA's description of the Arrays at Commercial Timescales (ACT) program, said: "It is imperative to define a path toward shorter design cycles and in-field updates and 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." Rockwell Collins will develop a common building block component that makes these antenna systems reconfigurable and readily upgradeable, driving down the cost of procurement by at least 80 percent, according to Paulsen.