TOYON RESEARCH CORPORATION — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: N181-087

Description

The U.S. Navy has a strong need to reduce the Radar Cross Section (RCS) of submarine masts such as the OE-538 in order to maintain stealth during high data rate communications. The submarine mast RCS is compounded by multi-path off the sea which tends to cause increased and persistent back-scattering over a wide range of aspect angles and frequencies. To avoid the high cost of reshaping the mast, the only viable technique to reduce the RCS is to utilize radio frequency (RF) absorber. The RF absorber needs to be judiciously applied to avoid degrading the communication signals while reducing the RCS. Toyon proposes to evaluate the feasibility of its patterned absorber for application in reducing the RCS of the Navy's submarine masts. Toyons patterned absorber can be applied like wall-paper and covered with a protective layer to withstand the harsh operating environment of a submarine mast. The thin patterned circuit layer consists of passive resistive and conductive elements that can be readily varied over a surface (i.e. tuned during manufacturing) using standard circuit board etching techniques. Toyon will use proven computer models to design absorbers specific to this application and then validate the predictions by testing a prototype.