High Power Tunable Agile Notch Filter

To address the Navy need for an agile notch filtering system, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop a new High Power Tunable Agile Notch (HIPTAN) filter. This proposed device is based on a newly designed superconducting varactor MEMS capacitor which exhibits high-Q and low-loss characteristics at liquid Nitrogen temperatures. The innovation in the superconducting varactor will enable HIPTAN to quickly (<1 microsecond) change the impedance to shift the location and width of the notch filter with minimal insertion loss (<0.5 dB). By applying voltage to the device, it can change the notch location anywhere in the VHF to L-band, providing notch width from 10 kHz to 10 MHz. Using MEMS components will enable HIPTAN to be fabricated in semiconductor batch processes and operate at a temperature of 77 K. In Phase I POC will demonstrate the feasibility of HIPTAN by fabricating a single filter element and showing its capability to be dynamically adjusted. In Phase II POC plans to develop a full prototype with several filter elements working in tandem to create an agile RF notch filter for testing at government facilities and demonstration in an actual jamming system and actual CNI systems.