Novel Pre-Fire Powering and Data Transfer Links for Munitions

The objective of this project is to investigate the feasibility of several novel wireless methods and related devices for pre-fire powering of munitions capacitors and/or super-capacitors and establishing one-way or two-way data transfer link to load firing information as well as health monitoring and the like. In the novel concepts being proposed the means of transferring power into the munitions housing as well as establishing data transfer link are optical. With the proposed concepts small as well as very large amount of power in the range of a few mW to over 100 Watts can be transferred into sealed munitions housing. The use of optical data transfer allows the proposed concept to achieve rates well in excess of 16 Mb/sec. The proposed novel concepts are suitable for in-breech and/or out-of-breech powering and data transfer applications. The proposed concepts are simple in design; do not have any moving parts or sensitive optical components; and can be designed for fabrication with commercially available components design for over 20 years of shelf life. Due to the optical nature, the proposed optical powering and data transmission concepts have the advantage of being immune to Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) and provide Immunity to Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP).