METAMAGNETICS INC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase II: Modern active electronically scanned phased array radars provide outstanding capability bu

Description

Modern active electronically scanned phased array radars provide outstanding capability but are unfortunately expensive. To a large degree, this results from the need for power and low noise amplifiers at each antenna element. A promising alternative architecture shares the amplifiers among many elements and thus requires a phase shifter at each element. This choice imposes challenging power handling and insertion loss requirements on the phase shifter. Ferrite phase shifters offer low loss and high power handling capability but are bulky, heavy and power consuming. In this proposal, the development of microstrip ferrite phase shifters that exhibit low loss (10 W), and tuning with low magnetic fields is pursued. In parallel, low power drivers (