Award Data

Future MDA space missions will utilize small spacecraft with correspondingly small, advanced sensor systems. Cooling of these sensors is required to decrease detector noise and increase detector sensitivity by maintaining the detector at a reduced operating temperature. The cooling system comprises a mechanical cryocooler and its control electronics, both of which are critical technologies to enab ...

To meet the demands of the MDA16-T005 STTR solicitation, the MaXentric/UTK team proposes the MaXPMFT, which exploits a wideband software defined radio architecture to create a transmitter with programmable output frequency. The flexible system will provide the ideal solution for current and future missile flight test telemetry needs through its compatibility with nearly all missile platforms and s ...

Diode-Pumped Alkali Lasers (DPALs) have great potential for high-energy lasers. Proper design of these systems is challenging because many interrelated processes impact their performance, and critical kinetic rate coefficients are not well known. In response, our team is developing a comprehensive physics-based analysis/design tool, and experimentally determining key kinetic rate coefficients. The ...

The objective of the research is to produce a technology that will effectively automate the processes of recognizing security threats to BMDS under the conditions of unpredictable dynamic situations and the periods of heightened alerts. Our method will provide human operators with results in the context of tactical and operational BMDS situations and gives sufficient explanations needed for future ...

The mitigation of mainlobe jamming is essential to missile defense radar performance. Applied Radar is currently investigating distributed aperture and adaptive processing architectures that promise a new generation of advanced radar performance. Our proposed program will research the application of these distributed aperture radar techniques to determine the mainlobe jammer suppression possible w ...

The design and development of phased-array radars requires the integration of solid-state components and adequate thermal mitigation within the array lattice constraints. The current trend is towards increasingly planar designs and a reduction in the array depth. The MDA SPEAR program is one example in which a planar T/R “tile” architecture is utilized. System-on-a-chip technologies such as Si ...

The objective of this proposal is to develop enhanced clutter and interference suppression methods to perform target detection and identification in presence of a cluttered environment. In addition, protection against mainbeam jamming is also addressed here using distributed Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) sensor technology. For this purpose smart transmit beamforming using together with ad ...

The objective of this project is to develop a novel expander that can increase the efficiency of cryocoolers for IR sensors at very low temperatures and in remote cooling and across gimbal applications. Miniature Thermoacoustic Expanders (MTAE) that employ high energy acoustic waves generated with no moving parts at the cold expander to produce efficient cooling over a wide range of temperatures a ...

Future missile detection systems will require improved thermal management for cooling gimbal-mounted sensors and optics. Current systems utilize cryocoolers placed on the gimbal, which necessitates the cryocooler heat to be rejected directly from the gimbal. A far superior approach in terms of payload mass would locate the warm elements of the cryocooler on the stationary platform near the space ...

This proposal is for the development of a versatile, computationally-efficient simulation tool for integrating flight path data from missile interceptors and targets, and analyzing defensive missile scenarios. Innovative cooperative guidance algorithms for multiple interceptors pursuing multiple targets will be developed. These algorithms, based on the framework of virtual bodies and artificial po ...