40mm Low/Medium Velocity Air Bursting Munitions System (2007050)

Most small/medium caliber munitions operate as point-detonation weapons without an air-burst capability which limits their effectiveness against hidden targets, scattered targets, and foot soldiers. The effectiveness of those weapons could be improved significantly by adding an air-burst capability to those munitions. A more effective approach is an active proximity sensor built into the projectile itself. Such proximity sensing fuze requires a miniaturized radar transceiver that is small enough to fit into the projectile and operates with little prime power. In the past two decades, Hittite Microwave Corporation has developed MMIC-based radar transceivers for such applications. Today, Hittite’s MMIC sensors are used in a wide variety of fuzes in munitions including: M734A1, XM782, EX419, and DSU-33. Hittite’s continued effort to miniaturize and reduce the power consumption led to demonstration of a proximity fuze for M-80 sub-munitions (EX433). More recently, Army developed an air-bursting fuze for 40-mm munitions using Hittites’ miniaturized low-power MMIC transceiver. Hittite proposes to utilize its established FM-CW Radar MMIC transceiver technology and combine it with a signal processing technique developed for automotive pre-crash applications that utilizes unique patented algorithms specifically designed to accurately predict the offset in trajectory of on-coming targets using a static antenna radiation pattern. Hittite algorithms are based on the mapping of synchronously detected Doppler in two or more range bins of a predetermined zone, and all calculations are done without the use of multiplication or division so that the technique can be implemented using simple commercially available RISK microcontroller for closing velocities in excess of 2000 m/s. Hittite Microwave Corporation is a manufacturer of fuze sensors with a history of supplying more than 1.5 million MMIC transceivers. Hittite is also a supplier of low-cost MMIC parts to the commercial market with a long established track record of transitioning its R&D results into commercial products.