Low SWaP Wideband Digital Receiver/Exciter (DREX) for Multifunction AESA

Next Generation airborne Navy Radar and Communication Systems will continue to rely on and evolve Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) systems to have more digitized channels for the flexibility of advanced digital beamforming (DBF), Space-Time Adaptive Processing (STAP), and agile wideband waveforms including Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) techniques. These evolutionary requirements all lead to the need for more Digital Receiver/Exciter (DREX) modules, but proliferating them on most platforms has historically not been possible due to the Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP) and Cost (SWaP-C) profile of existing solutions. Azure Summit is pleased to offer this proposal to NAVAIR in which we leverage our existing efforts for the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), NAVAIR, and Azure IR & D in DREX technology. Azure has a miniature wideband DREX module running in the lab today. Azure will leverage these technologies to develop 1 GHz wideband DREX concepts for NAVAIR in the 2-18 GHz band that support next generation AESA with full flexibility for improved radar modes, communications, SIGINT, EW, and other shared aperture concepts, and with low SWaP-C to enable doing this cost-effectively at the system level.