Synthetic Aperture Mobile Communications (SARCOM)

Improvements in channel capacity (i.e. bit rate) of mobile communication systems are important for extending their range and data throughput capabilities for current military and civilian applications and enable a number of new, highly marketable,applications. The objective of the program is the design, fabrication, and demonstration of an inexpensive, lightweight, 2-way (transmit/receive) mobile communication system that significantly outperforms current systems on a vehicle. The system will bebased on synthetic aperture techniques and will be capable of continuously tracking and communicating between transmit-receive pairs in relative motion such as moving vehicles-base stations and vehicles-satellites. The SARCOM concept treats thecommunication signal coherently. The phase shifting due to the relative motion between the transmit-receive pair is used in the processing in contrast to current receivers that are operated incoherently. Key feature is that no changes in existingsignaling infrastructure are required by the system; the SARCOM implementation is independent. The Phase I program will assess feasibility and compare the performance of the SARCOM to standard mobile satellite communication systems. Performance metricswill be considered. A formulation of the algorithm will be provided at the end of Phase I. The Phase II program will implement the algorithm in hardware demonstrations. The rapidly growing commercial telematics market creates a demand for increasedaccessibility to information that the enhanced communication channel capacity of the proposed (SARCOM) technology can provide. In addition to military uses, the channel capacity enhancements possible with SARCOM can enable high speed internet access fromcommercial planes, may re-energize the satellite telephone market by enabling use with compact hand held instruments and dramatically reduce the cost of cellular phone coverage in emerging markets.