Antenna Distribution System

Antenna capabilities are critical to acquiring warfighter intelligence collection, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) using a variety of receiver platforms, requiring agility in frequency, bandwidth, gain, directionality, polarization, and durability. Dynamically and automatically reconfigurable antenna connection concepts are proposed herein, by applying recently available lightweight, low power, under 6mm RF MEMS switches with SWaP features suited to agile mission requirements. These offer sub-millisecond antenna selection, antenna sharing, and more exotic capabilities such as combining signals from omnidirectional antennas with high gain directional antennas focused on critical areas of interest for multiple receivers, and future signal cancellation from interferers. Capabilities may include dynamic prefilters to automatically cancel interferers. Study areas: Evaluation and selection of current COTS RF MEMS switches (1.) A compact PCB design to offer Multiple Input, Multiple Output (MIMO) Antenna connector capability with selectable LNAs and selectable splitter/combiners (2.) An intuitive user interface for rapid antenna reallocation (3.) Ruggedized, and redundant capability to reroute thru the MEMS switch matrix should some channels fail (4.) Built-in self-test capability (BIST) offering critical assurance important signals are being received (5.) This effort extends Nokomis’ previous work employing MEMS switches to select dedicated bandpass and notch filters, opening a far broader capability offering.