MAXENTRIC TECHNOLOGIES LLC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: A14-067

Description

Based on continuing advances in digital processing technologies, the US Army is seeking a scalable all-digital radar (ADR) platform with improved performance and flexibility compared to current, more traditional analog radar systems. The US Army is looking for a technology that can digitize and synthesize at a T/R element level and also requires a backend processing architecture that can process the significant dataset collected by the radar array. In response to this ADR solicitation, MaXentric is proposing to develop a complete all-digital radar system codenamed SCARAB (Scalable Cellular Architecture for Radar Array Beamforming). As this proposal will detail, SCARAB consists of an array of T/R ?tiles? and a radar back-end to support them. The key components of each tile are an RF sampling receiver and a Direct Digital Synthesis (DDS) transmitter. The radar back-end performs the digital processing associated with digital beamforming and the underlying radar functions. The back-end will also distribute clock and reference signals to ensure coherency across the entire array.