Agile Beamformer System (ABS)

Shared Spectrum Company proposes to develop and demonstrate the Agile Beamformer System (ABS), which is a high-capacity, covert communication link providing two-way communication that has a low probability of intercept and low probability of detection and that is anti-jam. ABS uses multiple innovations to provide a breakthrough in performance compared to existing airborne communications approaches. These include digital transmit/receive beamforming, Dynamic Spectrum Access (to maximize the available spectrum and to avoid jammers) and time-of-day aligned request to send time slots. The antenna has low development costs and risk because of its location (mounted on the aircraft top and bottom) and simplicity (a circular array with a proven high-bandwidth 1 GHz to 3 GHz monopole). The transceiver operates in L-band because of the reduced free-space propagation loss and relatively wide antenna beamwidth minimizes link establishment and maintenance challenges. L-band is already used by other airborne systems (Tactical Targeting Network Technology, hence, there are reduced spectrum allocation problems. If supporting the X, Ku and/or Ka bands is required, then a block down converter will be added.   SSC has significant experience with other airborne links from the ONR Advanced Tactical Data Link (ATDL) and DSA TTNT projects. Multifunction Advanced Data Link (MADL) is a fast switching narrow directional communications data link between stealth aircraft. MADL is Ku band, frequency-hopping, phased system. MADL has very expensive due to the high frequency band, and the complex link establishment and maintenance approach. TTNT operates in L-band, and uses waveform spreading and omni-directional antennas, hence, it has limited LPD performance. TTNT is also an expensive radio due to transceiver complexity and high processing power requirements. In contrast, ABS blends the best features of TTNT and MADL to provide higher performance with less complexity (lower cost and risk).