FIRST RF CORPORATION — Department of Defense SBIR Phase II: FIRST RF has developed a revolutionary new dual band SATCOM antenna that provides greater

Description

FIRST RF has developed a revolutionary new dual band SATCOM antenna that provides greater than hemispherical field of view with a very low profile. The solution combines mechanical pointing with electrical pointing to support communication links over a full hemisphere while maintaining a very low profile and is optimized to fit on the RC-12 aircraft with constrained top mount installation footprint. The proposed work is targeting an airborne SATCOM On The Move antenna design for Ku and Ka band, full duplex operations. This solution lowers the active RF module count from many thousands for a comparably performing conventional phased array to 48 full duplex modules. The FIRST RF hybrid scan solution provides very low profile (<12 inch height), two-axis fast steering, greater than full hemispherical coverage, very low loss, and extremely low RF module count. The proposed Phase II program will fabricate and test a full size system demonstrating the performance benefits.