subtopic B: Digital Beamforming (DBF) Subarray for Radar and Communications Applications

"MMCOMM with support from UCLA will design a low mass, low power digital beamforming (DBF) subarray for radar and communications applications. The technology is applicable to any communication or radar band, namely L, S, X or EHF. We will evaluate advancedDDS and D/A digital waveform generation. We will investigate flexible membrane materials such as Kapton and Liquid Crystal Polymer (LCP). Tradeoffs will be performed comparing alternate architectures. The baseline approach is a DDS waveform generatorfeeding a hybrid RF/IF - digital beamformer. The DDS based approach is based upon extending the current MMCOMM developed DDS technology that operates at Ka-band. The digital beamforming technology is based upon that currently under development at UCLA forthe commercial wireless market. Thus the utilization of applicable COTS technology is a potential realization for the proposed design. We will leverage the current MMCOMM DDS and microwave / MMW MMIC capability plus the UCLA MMW Lab DBF capability todevelop the solution for Phase I. We will investigate the applicability of waveforms such as CDMA and OFDM. For Phase II we will propose building a demo subarray leveraging off the newly developing COTS microwave / MMW technology at MMCOMM and the MMW /digital beamforming technology at UCLA. A digital beamforming subarray having very low mass, and power consumption is an extremely useful component for DBF phased array antennas and DBF arr