Physical Optics Corporation — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: A17-041

Description

To address the Army need for a low cost, Small, Agile Filter Tunable (SAF-T) capable of being tuned via a variety of different control protocols, i.e., platform data bus, radio interfaces, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) is proposing a new Small High-Power Agile Colocated Electronically Tunable (SPACE) bandpass filter, based on a resonating RF structure with ferroelectric-based capacitors for tuning. The innovation in high-Q resonating RF structures provides a large tunable range by using high-power, voltage-tunable, barium strontium titanate (BST) capacitors to quickly (<25 microseconds) change the filter frequency. As a result SPACE filters offer 30-512 MHz tuning range, low insertion loss (<4 dB), 25W in-band RF power, and >30 dB single side attenuation at 10% center frequency (CF). SPACE filters will support waveforms including HAVEQUICK, WNW, and SRW and can interface with different systems such as ARC231. In Phase I, POC will prove the feasibility of the SPACE filter technology by fabricating a prototype filter design and demonstrating dynamic tuning over a large bandwidth (30 MHz-512 MHz), with both low insertion loss and low power consumption, reaching TRL-3. In Phase II, POC plans to develop a full prototype for demonstration and evaluation at an Army facility (TRL-5).