Innovative Approaches to Increased Power and Efficiency in Components for X-Band Radar for Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD)

The proposed research will produce alternative, effective fractal patterns that provide: flexibility in the design process, additional degrees of freedom to the design engineer and enhanced SNR in RF systems. This should enable design engineers to support existing MDA GMD radar system LFM waveforms while also enabling consideration of advanced radar waveforms that might be required for special radar functions and missions. This research will be the basis for the development a fractal structure technology that reduces sensitivities to alignment errors and spacing errors that might make the FNF device to device fabrication difficult for producing uniform results. In addition, FNF structures that ease design issues such as large port impedance transforms, high in-band phase ripple, in-amplitude ripple, uniform time delay, and others will be investigated. The FNF devices are completely passive and self-contained. They require neither external power sources nor additional digital signal processing at the output to achieve enhanced SNR. This research will provide a new category of inexpensive, easily integrated, compact signal to noise enhancement technologies. High performance, practical FNF patterns through parametric analysis, interrelating fractal pattern geometry to waveform parameters will be investigated and developed. Results: Several new pattern FNF devices will be investigated, fabricated and tested. These fractal patterns promise to enhance LFM SNR beyond current measurements and also support advanced waveforms having potential use in special radar function and communications applications. These could include but are not limited to: fractal, PRN, BPSK, FSK, FJB, etc. waveforms and signals. The present FNF has already been shown to pass two fractal waveforms.