VADUM INC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: Many currently deployed and in-development weapons and associated systems require copious

Description

Many currently deployed and in-development weapons and associated systems require copious amounts of RF (radio frequency) power at many different frequency ranges. Simply put, the problem of RF power generation gets more difficult with increasing power level, increasing frequency, increasing bandwidth, and increasing efficiency with fixed system prime power and thermal constraints. The traditional trade study preparatory to architecture, class, and device selection and then circuit design is a consideration of the n-dimensional space where each of these metrics is an axis. Many possible choices exist, for many different applications"comms, EW (electronic warfare), radar, etc."and thus traditional choices abound. Despite the availability of traditional RF/microwave power amplifier choices these choices often have well-known shortcomings such as size, weight, cost, efficiency, and fragility. Time marches on, new circuit and system architectures evolve, and new device technologies come to fruition. There is both an ongoing push from innovators in industry and a continual pull from the user community to improve these shortcomings in operational systems. This proposal intends to exploit and satisfy both, for a particular amplifier embodiment.