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RF & Microwave Electronics

Signal Analyzer

Agilent Technologies (Santa Clara, CA) has introduced the N9030A PXA signal analyzer, which provides frequency coverage up to 26.5 GHz and features up to 75 dB spurious-free dynamic range at 140-MHz analysis bandwidth. It also...

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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...

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Articles
RF & Microwave Electronics

Demodulating Over-the-Air Communications

Today, modern radio designs have made a predominant shift to the software-defined radio architecture. From cellular handsets to military communications devices, the flexibility to use multiple wireless...

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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...

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Articles
RF & Microwave Electronics

Synthetic Aperture Radar Image Recognition

Synthetic radar image recognition and classification are areas of interest for both the military and civilian communities. These tasks have significance in automatic target recognition, air traffic...

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Application Briefs
RF & Microwave Electronics

New All-Digital RF Technology Simplifies the Radio Environment

The concept of a software or “cognitive” radio has been around for about 20 years, and has progressed to the point where open-source software code is available. A cognitive radio is “smart” in the sense that it is continuously aware of changes in radio frequency (RF) spectrum...

Articles
RF & Microwave Electronics

Wireless Sensor Network with Geolocation

Maintaining situational/positional awareness in indoor and urban environments is difficult because buildings, walls, and other obstacles obstruct vision and RF propagation. Propagation channels are...

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Articles
RF & Microwave Electronics

Prognostic Health Management of an RF System Using GPS

Prognostic health management (PHM) of electronic systems presents challenges that traditionally were not worth the cost of pursuit. Recent changes in weapons platform acquisition and...

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Articles
Photonics/Optics

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...

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Articles
RF & Microwave Electronics

Prototyping Advanced Military Radar Systems

Radar receiver design is seeing an increase in the number of digital tuning and digital signal processing (DSP) functions moved from back-end single-board computers into fixed front-end hardware...

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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...

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Application Briefs
RF & Microwave Electronics

Microwave RF Amplifier Boosts Communications Power

When you watch TV or use a cell phone, amplifiers make the signal stronger or the voice clearer. A hybrid, high-powered microwave amplifier from Aria Microwave Systems of Teaneck, NJ enables...

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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.

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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...

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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...

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Briefs
Electronics & Computers

Design Study of a C-Band Crestatron

A design study of a crestatron that would operate in the frequency range from 3 to 6 GHz (which overlaps with the C band) has been performed. The basic crestatron concept was developed during the 1950s....

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Briefs
Physical Sciences

Implementing a GPS Waveform Under the SCA

A continuing development effort focuses on implementation of a Global Positioning System (GPS) waveform under the Software Communications Architecture (SCA). [As used within the special technological...

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Briefs
RF & Microwave Electronics

Photonic Analog-to-Digital Converters

Early steps have been taken toward the development of analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) that would incorporate photonic quantizers based on the technology of InP semiconductors. These photonic ADCs are...

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Briefs
RF & Microwave Electronics

Traveling-Wave Wide-Band Microstrip Antennas

Microstrip antennas that can be made to perform well over relatively wide frequency ranges but are mechanically and electrically simpler than prior such antennas have been invented. These antennas...

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Briefs
RF & Microwave Electronics

Accomplishments of the Microwave Power Research Initiative

Research performed under the auspices of the Microwave Power Research Initiative (MiPRI) between May 1, 2005 and April 30, 2006 has been reported. [The MiPRI is a congressionally mandated Air Force program to advance the science of high-power electron- beam-driven microwave and millimeter-...

Articles
Defense

Open-Standard Multicomputers Address Next-Generation Multi-Function Radar Applications

Next-generation radar applications will drive performance demands that will have architectural implications for radar computing and electronics. Advanced...

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Briefs
RF & Microwave Electronics

Ground-Penetrating Radar

AFRL engineers used prototypes of recently developed ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and electronic cone penetrometer (ECP) devices to determine whether voids and anomalies in a particular airfield's subsoil were...

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Briefs
Electronics & Computers

Collapsing and Closing Unmanned Air Vehicle Swarms

AFRL researchers are exploring an adaptive and reconfigurable unmanned air vehicle (UAV) swarm configuration known as "collapsing and closing UAV swarms." This approach to developing UAV swarms...

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