Integrated Electro-Optical and Radio-Frequency Aperture

"Due to the fact that real estate on specific platforms (i.e. physical space on an aircraft) is already very crowded, it is difficult to house the many optical sensors, antennas, or other sensor components onto such tight-spaced platforms. Therefore, thistopic seeks to consolidate as many sensor components as possible in the same architecture to reduce space requirements on platforms that are already busy, and which will enable the use of the best sensing modality for the specific conditions and mission.An Electro-Optic/Radio-Frequency (EO/RF) aperture for both transmission and reception of electromagnetic energy will merge an optical transmitter/receiver into a RF antenna or antennas array (multiple EO sensors in one RF antenna array). This marriage hasmany other benefits in addition to conserving real estate, such as EO/RF communications, EO/RF target finder and recognition, EO/RF weather radar, and EO/RF atmospheric scanning. Commercial benefits of the proposed research include communications andweather radar applications. For communications, by having an EO aperture/system coupled to a RF antenna, this enables the two bands of frequencies to be used together as a common communicator. For example, a RF signal can locate, by scanning thelandscape or satellite, the receiver end, then use optical frequencies or a laser for line-of-sight communications instead of a broad band signal. Another commercial use is weather radar. For i