Reduction of Coincidental and Intentional Electromagnetic Interference

Hittite Microwave Corporation proposes to develop a low-cost adaptive antenna electronics system design for the suppression of high-power, wideband, pulsed, as well as continuous, RH. The proposed design is based on MMIC components for low-cost antenna processing at RF, and a null-steering antenna algorithm employing a novel direct-search optimization method tailored for operation in a pulsed-RH environment The major goals of the Phase I effort are: (i) Development and demonstration of antenna algorithm which utilize antenna input, as well as antenna output, power measurements to detect and track On/Off intervals of pulsed-RH, and thereby modify the adaptation of the antenna weights, (ii) Generation of design specification for a low-cost, 4-channel MMIC for RF antenna processing, (iii) Generation of a low-cost system design for a 4-channel antenna electronics module based on the antenna RF processor MMIC and antenna algorithm implementation through general purpose DSP. Our cost/performance goal is to develop an antenna electronics unit with anti-jam processing gain up to 30 dB against one to three pulsed or continuous RH sources, and with production cost less than $500. The proposed low-cost null-steering antenna is expected to benefit commercial spread spectrum radio systems from hostile (terrorist) or coincidental (self-induced) RH. Two prime candidate systems for antenna applications are (i) GPS receivers in commercial aircraft, and (ii) base station receivers of cellular CDMA networks.