Advanced Waveform Processing

Current communications initiatives reflect the greater military and societal trend; more information, more data, to more people, at a greater rate, with less latency. While extremely high rate backbone links are in planning, higher rate links still need to be pushed out to the mobile user. Given the fixed nature of spectrum, advanced waveforms are a long-term imperative. Leveraging its background in complex waveform analysis and simulation, Nova will perform a trade-off study including parameters of spectrum vs. detector efficiencies, implementation complexity, size, weight, power, cost, etc., for a transmitter and receiver platform. In consideration of minimizing power through use of non-linear amplifiers, a constant envelope waveform is the likely solution. The key will be balancing minimum Eb/No and implementation complexity, while hitting the target 5 bits/sec/Hz. A block diagram level design will identify key challenges in RF, digital hardware, firmware, software, and packaging. Collaboration with government representatives will nail down suitable architectures, leading to a Phase II development program.