SI2 TECHNOLOGIES, INC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase II: A12-045

Description

SI2 Technologies, Inc. (SI2) proposes to design and develop a reduced profile conformal UHF SATCOM antenna for high speed rotorcraft. SI2 will leverage experience with advanced materials and novel antenna miniaturization techniques to design, fabricate and test an integrated conformal UHF antenna with custom feed network. The antenna will be designed for integration onto a representative helicopter platform. The Phase II program is built upon previous work conducted by SI2 during a Phase I effort to develop a metaferrite antenna for MUOS SATCOM frequencies. The advantages of SI2s antenna solution include: low profile, high efficiency and bandwidth extension to cover Legacy UHF SATCOM. In Phase II, this antenna concept will be refined through modeling and hardware. A custom feed network will be design for low profile integration direction into the antenna cavity. The performance of the antenna system will be optimized and validated through the manufacture and testing of hardware demonstrators. A flight test prototype will be fabricated to support a test on a representative aircraft with a SATCOM radio, resulting in TRL 7 for the antenna system.