Program Summary
The Adaptive RF Technology (ART) program aims to significantly advance the hardware used in communication radios by developing a fully adaptive and reconfigurable architecture that is agnostic to specified waveforms and standards. ART-enabled “cognitive” radios would be able to reconfigure themselves to operate in any frequency band with any modulation and for multiple access specifications under a range of environmental and operating conditions. The primary goal of the program is to demonstrate a reconfigurable RF front-end covering a frequency range spanning from less than or equal to 10 MHz to greater than or equal to 30 GHz and capable of identifying, receiving and/or transmitting more than 100 military and commercial waveforms specified over this range on the fly. The program calls for this capability in a package that is significantly smaller, lighter and less power hungry than currently available hardware. It also seeks a front-end that will consist of fully waveform-agile channels and analog-sensing channels designed to detect and identify waveforms over the spectral field of regard. In addition to maintaining critical communication links, ART is anticipated to equip individual warfighters, as well as small-scale unmanned platforms, with a compact and powerful signal-sensing and analysis platform capable of characterizing the signal environment, while enabling rapid radio platform deployment for new waveforms and changing operational requirements.
The ART program encompasses four thrust areas, each focused on a specific enabling technology for adaptive radios:
- Operational amplifiers capable of operating in the microwave frequency regime and beyond (up to 30+ GHz)
- Reconfigurable and tunable RF/microwave and analog sensor filter arrays
- Low-energy waveform signal processing
- A waveform-agile, reconfigurable RF front-end and analog/mixed-signal components