A Capability for Measuring Attenuation and Backscatter of Experimental Microwave Aerosols

Obscurant technologies continue to be of high value to today’s Warfighter, what has evolved from smoke released from a canister are now high precision manufactured structures designed for individual targeted use cases. While the technology to model, design, and manufacture these items has increased, testing methodologies and apparatus have largely been restricted to large scale events. What is needed is a contained laboratory scale investigative technique for verifying performance vs. design and manufacture. This response addresses the development of a microwave based test methodology and equipment design for studying these aerosols.  Moving testing from the large areas and volumes involved in field tests, to contained laboratory settings has a number of challenges. First, the dispersal and behavior of these dynamic aerosol systems must have their fundamentally unconstrained deployed environments reproduced within a contained volume without impacting the measurement. Challenges such as dispersal and concentration non-uniformities as well as artificial clumping due to exposed surfaces or constrained free space paths must be addressed. The measurements themselves must take into account aspects such as measurement time in how it relates to application as well as what is truth, in regards to these measurements being anchored and calibrated. The IERUS Technologies led team will leverage our extensive RF measurement expertise, material parameter extraction, high-fidelity modeling, and rapid-prototyping capabilities to create a measurement methodology which may be anchored simulation results.