ALPHACORE INC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: N231-013

Description

Alphacore will develop a MWIR ROIC, FPA and a full camera system to perceive, identify, and track hypersonic vehicle threats. The developed optical system will be a unique cost-effective, distributed, early-warning sensing solution. Alphacore will demonstrate critical elements of this advanced optical system design for the detection, identification, and tracking of hypersonic cruise missiles to provide early cueing of fixed-site and ship self-defense systems in a tiered fixed and mobile network utilizing both unmanned and manned platform concepts.  This includes the definition of sensor carrying requirements in terms of power, volume, weight, noise limitations, motion limitations, and so forth; Identification of specific configuration(s) to be included; And the development of the strategy and design of integration and scale of the autonomous platform. A central innovative element in Alphacore’s solution is the ROIC that has 2k x 2k pixels and frame rate of 2.5kfps for full resolution, with very high frame rate for smaller regions of interest (e.g. 160kfps for 256 x 256 ROI). Alphacore’s ROIC has both conventional frame based and novel event based readout mechanisms. The event-based imaging architecture is excellent for low latency threat warning functionality. It also consumes very low power, which is important for a MWIR ROIC that is placed inside the cryocooled dewar.