Tunable, High-Q Filters for UHF Communications

In today"s dense electromagnetic environment, proper allocation and management of spectrum is an overriding concern for U.S. military forces. The ubiquity of wireless systems places many radiators spectrally or physically near one another, impacting receiver performance through interference or jamming. The dynamic nature of the radio environment prevents precise knowledge of all these interferers, further complicating mitigation. This has highlighted the need for high-performance, frequency-agile filtering in receiver front-ends to maximize system performance by supporting dynamic adjustment of radio operation to mitigate the effects of jamming and co-site interference. This proposed project incorporates the latest design and manufacturing techniques (novel cavity filters, 3-D printing technology, high performance thin-film manufacturing) with the best available tuning technologies (piezoelectric actuators, MEMS-based tunable capacitors/switches) to create reconfigurable filters at UHF frequencies. This project enables the possibility of compact, low-loss, UHF tunable filters which will be of great benefit to next generation military communications systems where adaptive frequency management is required.