Attritable Platform k-Space Imaging for Persistent Situational Awareness of the RF Spectrum

To be effective in today’s battlefield environment, direct and reliable access to the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum is absolutely necessary. This being said, access points within the spectrum are often dynamic and unpredictable. For this reason, it is necessary to incorporate spatial diversity and spectral agility into next-generation communication and EW systems. However, such operational flexibility is only useful if there is an awareness of the spatial/spectral operations within the environment. To address this need, the proposed project will develop and demonstrate such an awareness by refining a microwave-photonic approach that combines the spatial characteristics of a phased array antenna, in the RF domain, with frequency dispersive techniques commonly applied in the optical domain. The end result is a technique, colloquially referred to as instant k-Space imaging, that provides the unambiguous determination of the angle-of-arrival (AoA) and instantaneous-frequency-measurement (IFM) in real time. This system can be designed to operate over an extremely wide operational bandwidth (5-40 GHz) with the use of an appropriate RF front end. Moreover, this system can be integrated with Tx/Rx phased-array systems to dynamically tune spectrum operations to an appropriate frequency in a suitable direction to ensure the efficacy of electromagnetic maneuver techniques in congested and contested EM environments.