Conformal Impulse Receive Antenna Arrays

The UWB radar operation is based on the transmission of an Ultra-Wide-Band (UWB) impulse signal at the target of interest. The radar will initially receive the short UWB impulse reflected from the target followed by the late time "ringing" of the target at its resonant frequencies. The late time waveform, consisting of multiple damped sine waves, is used to detect and identify metallic objects of interest. In this application, it is vital for the transmit antenna to be non-dispersive over the entire bandwidth of the UWB impulse so that the transmitted pulse does not "spread-out" or "smear", which would mask the late time resonance signals. A non-dispersive UWB antenna maximizes the length of the late time signature used for analysis. We propose to develop a new class of highly configurable conformal antenna array to meet a wide range of UWB radar applications, including optimized performance with SARA's breakthrough channelized receiver technology, which gives AFRL the widest flexibility in terms of custom application development.