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Aerospace

System Could Detect Concealed Person-Borne Bombs at a Distance

The recent tragic events at the Boston Marathon illustrate the growing and critical need for the detection of person-borne improvised explosive devices (PBIEDS). Such systems, in...

Articles

Aerospace

Simulation Optimizes Safety and Performance When Integrating an Antenna Onto a Platform

Successful integration of an antenna onto a vehicle platform poses many challenges. Vehicle features impact antenna performance by blocking, reflecting, or...

Articles

RF & Microwave Electronics

A Fundamental Key to Next-Generation Directed-Energy Systems

Imagine an explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) unit on a routine scouting patrol deep in the notorious “Triangle of Death” south of Baghdad, where marines, sailors, and soldiers...

Briefs

Electronics & Computers

Fundamentals of Metamaterials for High-Power RF Applications

Recent years have seen a burgeoning interest in the physics and applications of metamaterials. Briefly, metamaterials consist of a periodic array of subwavelength structures that...

Application Briefs

Data Acquisition

Creating a Phased Array Radar for Avalanche Imaging

Avalanches pose a significant threat to human life and settlements, so studying them is key to formulating risk zones. Previously, validating models in order to predict avalanche behavior was...

Articles

RF & Microwave Electronics

Expanding the Use of Aerial Downlinks

Today, airborne downlinks are no longer limited to strategic command applications. More and more, first responders, fire departments, EMS personnel, and others are employing airborne downlinks to meet a...

Application Briefs

RF & Microwave Electronics

Jamming-Resistant Adaptive Radio System

Developing smart antennas for jam-resistant cognitive or software-defined radio systems entails a number of challenging issues. Researchers at the University of Texas are investigating methods to locate...

Articles

RF & Microwave Electronics

Using Modeling and Simulation to Assess Antenna Performance During Vehicle Platform Integration

Successful integration of an antenna onto a vehicle platform poses many challenges. Vehicle features impact antenna performance by blocking,...

Application Briefs

RF & Microwave Electronics

High-Reliability MEMS Switches for Radio Frequency Applications

The RF MEMS switch will be an important building block for a variety of wireless applications including cell phones, smart antennas, tunable filters, automated test equipment...

Application Briefs

Test & Measurement

Measuring Radar Cross Section with Handheld VNAs

Radar cross section (RCS) is the measure of an object's ability to reflect radar signals in the direction of the radar receiver, i.e. it is the measure of the ratio of backscatter per steradian...

Articles

RF & Microwave Electronics

Harnessing FPGAs for Beamforming Software Radio Systems

Over the past 20 years, software defined radio techniques have not only revolutionized radar and communications systems, but they have also boosted system performance levels. One of the...

Articles

Test & Measurement

Reliable EMI Shielding Materials and RF Cable Assemblies Ensure High Performance for Handheld Test Instruments

While high-performance test equipment has been used successfully in the laboratory for many years, the trend is moving toward remote...

Articles

RF & Microwave Electronics

Microwave Energy Transmission for Aircraft

Unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, are used in many applications to gather intelligence without risking human lives. These aircraft, however, have limited flight time because of their reconnaissance...

Articles

RF & Microwave Electronics

Antenna Design Considerations

With the advent of prolific wireless communications applications, system designers are in a position to consider the placement and performance of an antenna system. The first step in establishing antenna...

Briefs

Materials

RF Polymer Composites for Electromagnetic Systems

Design of polymer composites with specific engineered electromagnetic properties are of use in a variety of physical electromagnetic systems above 100 MHz. In physical electromagnetic systems such as GPS, radomes, WiFi, etc., proper choice of the material can be transformative in that it can yield...

Briefs

Electronics & Computers

Wireless Network Cocast: Location-Aware Cooperative Communications with Linear Network Coding

In wireless networks, reducing aggregate transmit power and having even power distribution increase the network lifetime. The conventional direct transmission (DTX) scheme results in high aggregate transmit power and uneven power distribution. In...

Briefs

Photonics/Optics

Analysis of Analog Photonic Links Employing Multiple-Channel (Arrayed) Receivers

Analog optical links are finding increased application in commercial and military systems ranging from radio-over-fiber applications, antenna remoting, and optical...

Application Briefs

RF & Microwave Electronics

Ballistic Radomes for Communications Antennas

The Army Digitized Force requires a robust communications infrastructure for its superior IT/C4ISR (Information Technologies/Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Sur veil...

Briefs

Electronics & Computers

Cooperative Single-Antenna Node Networks

Future tactical networks will be complex, with severe constraints on energy and bandwidth, operating in dynamic and unpredictable environments. By exploiting the broadcast nature of the wireless medium and spatially dispersed nodes, some of these advantages can be realized through cooperation among...

Application Briefs

RF & Microwave Electronics

High-Cycle Life Testing of RF MEMS Switches

MEMS switch technology has many potential benefits over conventional electronic devices for switching microwave and millimeter-wave signals. MEMS switches possess very low insertion loss, miniscule...

Articles

RF & Microwave Electronics

Developing a Beam Former for Electronically Steered Antennas

There are several applications for phased arrays in Army communication systems. This spans frequency bands ranging from UHF to Ka bands and performance requirements that include...

Briefs

Electronics & Computers

Optical Microwave-Signal-Channelization Technique Analyzed

In a recent study, a proposed technique for optical frequency-band channelization of a microwave signal or other wide-band radio signal in a receiver was analyzed and compared with...

Briefs

Test & Measurement

Improvements in Measurement of Permeability and Permittivity

The two-transmission method is an improved method of determining, from microwave measurements, the complex permeability and complex permittivity of a sample of a material typified by...

Articles

RF & Microwave Electronics

Role and Performance of the Global Precipitation Measurement Microwave Imager Instrument

The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission will initiate a new era in precipitation measurement in terms of its global extent and frequency of...

Application Briefs

RF & Microwave Electronics

Portable Antenna Helps Hurricane Survivors Communicate

Victims of Hurricane Katrina found peace of mind in the aftermath thanks to an inflatable antenna that enabled emergency satellite communications for displaced Mississippians.

Briefs

RF & Microwave Electronics

Arcing and Vibration Tests of High-Power Patch Antennas

Electric-breakdown and vibration tests were performed on one-patch and two-patch versions of a prototype of a patch antenna designed to radiate a continuous- wave or pulsed signal in the S...

Briefs

Physical Sciences

Antenna Electronically Steered Using MEMS Phase Shifters

An experimental phased-array microwave antenna assembly includes an array of eight patch antenna elements connected to Microelectromechanical System (MEMS) phase shifters, by means of...

Briefs

Photonics/Optics

Miniaturized GPS Controlled-Reception-Pattern Antenna Array

A miniaturized Global Positioning System (GPS) antenna array is being developed for use on aircraft on which the room available for installation of this or any other equipment is...

Briefs

Physical Sciences

All-Dielectric, Non-Electronic Radio-Receiver Front Ends

All-dielectric, non-electronic, photonicassisted front ends are being developed as alternatives to traditional metal antennas and the associated metal connections and input electronic...