MAXENTRIC TECHNOLOGIES LLC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: AF161-082

Description

ABSTRACT: Next generation satellite communication systems must be robust to hostile jammers which degrade link budget and desensitize reception. A proposed solution is to use frequency hopping techniques to communicate in a spectrum space free of hostile jammers and an all digital radio in which the agility and robustness is provided by the data-converters. To this end, broadband high dynamic range data-converters are needed to cover the broad-spectrum of interest allowing for frequency hopping. To meet this demand, MaXentric proposes to implement the L-band data-converters in a RADHARD SOI process (such as Honeywell or STmirco) meeting stringent space radiation specifications. The ADC will use time-interleaving for speed enhancement, low-jitter clock generation for improved ENOB, and linear sampling techniques with calibration to meet SFDR. For the DAC, previous expertise in high-speed high power digital envelope tracking PAs will be leveraged creating a dual technology based DAC (CMOS-SOI and GaN) for speed and output power.; BENEFIT: All digital approaches for transceivers in which the design performance is mainly leveraged on the data-converters are becoming wide-spread for various applications. The technology developed under the L-band Data-converter program has various applications, not just for DoD. In particular, all digital radar and phased arrays for imaging in auto-motive collision avoidance has become a high topic of interest and leverage an array of high speed data-converters for each antenna element. Future 5G technology, moreover, will likely heavily depend on digital phased array technology to increase data rates, the number of users, and improve link budget. All of these techniques require high speed, high ENOB, high SFDR, and low power data-converters. An identified potential costumer of the L-band data-converter technology developed would be NXPa leader in development of RADAR automotive chipsets.