Low Cost Electronically Steered Multi-Beam Transmit Array

We propose to demonstrate the feasibility of a high gain beamsteering antenna based on the Team"s pixel-addressable reconfigurable conformal antenna (PARCA) Software-Defined Antenna technology. With prior DoD SBIR funding from the Missile Defense Agency, the Navy, and the Air Force, the Team of Syntonics LLC and the ElectroScience Laboratory of The Ohio State University (ESL/OSU) have already made significant progress towards realizing the PARCA concept of Software Defined Antennas. PARCA antennas have been studied at frequencies up to Ka band and we plan to extend this work to develop a feasible PARCA concept with hemispherical coverage suitable for naval ships. PARCA uses conductive pixels that can be turned"on"or"off"to rapidly to reconfigure beam pointing direction,operating frequency, aperture gain, and beam polarization. This is fast enough to compensate for all but extremely rapid motions. An antenna system with the capability of reconfiguring the frequency, polarization, and radiation pattern allows flexibility in both the mounting profile and steering techniques.