Tiny Full Duplex Distributed Phase Alignment (TIDAL)

The goal of Ziva’s 2 SBIR proposal entitled Tiny Full Duplex Distributed Phase Alignment (TIDAL) is to demonstrate the feasibility of a novel analog approach to wirelessly distribute TWTT 10ps (supporting Ka band phase coherence) level timing and phase reference enabling coherent signal processing across distributed platforms that fundamentally alters the scaling of size, weight, power, and cost of distributed RF military systems. Test benches able to characterize the phase transfer function of constructed TIDAL prototypes with sub-picosecond accuracy will be setup to evaluate constructed prototypes. The TIDAL system will then be prototyped utilizing discrete components and tested with the constructed test-benches. CMOS test chips will be designed, fabricated, and tested to validate critical TIDAL system blocks compatible with CMOS fabrication. A high-level ASIC architecture and simulation will be created, and a lab demonstration will be conducted with the discrete-component-based prototype. The option effort will implement a chip-scale TIDAL system on a CMOS chip, which demonstrate timing refresh rates >200KHz, supporting Doppler shifts of >Mach 2 delta velocity with 100-100 X lower SWaP versus the Phase II Base implementation and lowering cost. The option effort will also verify via simulation that multiuser channel access methods selected are scalable.