Low-Power W-Band Transceiver using COTS Solutions

There is a growing demand for spaceborne active radar sensing systems that make use of RF frequencies across nearly all the microwave bands. This Phase I proposal explores the use of millimeter-wave (mmW) FMCW radar transceiver for an altimeter for spacecraft descent guidance and landing. In addition, the proposal will touch on other architectures using the low-cost W-Band building blocks downselected and simulated for this Phase I effort.We propose to identify and downselect available commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) W-Band MMICs, ideally using surface-mount technology (SMT), in the form of FMCW (Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave) Radar Transceiver building blocks. In a Phase II, the bare die would be packaged into SMT packages with an external waveguide interface and employ low-cost mature manufacturing techniques. This approach allows much shorter design development and characterization times for the difficult mmWave design risk efforts, while taking on a manageable amount of technical debt and risk for the ADC, DC and Baseband electronics sections in the form of existing COTS solutions.nbsp;This Phase I effort will serve two main benefits: provide a risk reduction effort by characterizing the building blocks of a 94 GHz solid-state based FMCW Radar transceiver while also allowing future coupling of a dynamically steerable, waveguide-fed metasurface antenna to evolve into a manufacturable commercial product.In other non-NASA applications, a W-Band radar transceiver with a steerable aperture could be the critical building block for high-resolution imagery and target tracking in what the DoD calls DVE (Degraded visual Environments).nbsp;The specific DVE application is for rotary-wing and is referred to as ldquo;brown-outrdquo; and this type of radar has been prohibitively expensive as most helicopters require several instances of this radar per aircraft to be useful.