Award Data

State of the art Radiation Hardened by Design (RHBD) techniques must scale down in feature size for radiation effects in 45 nm processes, and also scale up in complexity to support radiation fault analysis of VLSI circuits. Recent access to commercial 45 nm CMOS Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) technologies has increased the interest in this technology for rad-hard electronic applications due to the in ...

SOCOM is seeking an innovative solution for a simpler, high capacity scrubber to reduce the levels of CO2 in underwater breathing apparatus and re-breathers. Existing CO2 scrubbers are absorbent based and suffer from slow reaction rates under pressure, at colder temperatures, and under heavy breathing, as well as limited CO2 capacity and the dangers of a caustic cocktail if the scrubber floods. ...

For various defense agencies, DNA profiling can reduce, eliminate and counter threats from unconventional warfare and WMDs. Rapid forensic DNA analysis on suspicious materials can provide crucial information on individuals involved in such activities, and this information can supply national defense personnel and warfighters with increased situational awareness. Currently in forensic DNA profili ...

A back-illuminated planar InGaAs photodiode tested to have 95% quantum effiiency (QE) at 1550 nm, area greater than 1 mm2, low capacitance (125 MHz) will be improved. Although the existing Phase I device exhibited bulk material dark current generation better than commercially available devices, the sidewall-generated dark current was found to dominate the noise equiva ...

The development of a greatly enhanced receiver for the WWVB signal is targeted, as well as possible modifications in the transmitted signal, which would both offer significant improvements in its effective coverage. This is to be achieved while allowing the replacement of the bulky, expensive, ferrite-based antenna, commonly used in the receiver, with a novel lower-cost antenna. Furthermore, the p ...

The accurate numerical prediction of hazardous airborne plumes requires two important capabilities. First, meteorological conditions at fine spatial scale both at the time of plume release as well as a few hours into the future, and second, quantification of this information in a statistically reliable probabilistic framework. The proposed study will use a combination of fine-scale ensemble re-fo ...

A longwire antenna module is proposed, incorporating a length reduction technique that yields 25-75% length reduction with minimal impact on gain. A resonant monopole antenna operating at 535kHz is approximately 440ft long; length reduction techniques will reduce this to between 69ft and 134ft depending upon the desired gain. A shorter/lighter longwire antenna will allow the aircraft to be more ...

An antenna system is proposed for the purpose of FM, TV-VHF, and TV-UHF PSYPOS broadcast applications. The antenna system incorporates a radiating structure that is small, light weight, and conformal. A circularly polarized beam is broadcast from an aircraft towards nadir, illuminating the region below the craft with a horizontally-polarized signal, yielding polarizations pointing in both the No ...

In this Phase I SBIR project for the DTRA, Energetics Materials and Products Inc (EMPI) of Austin, Texas, will develop an innovative technology to neutralize Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) without detonation or risk to personnel. Neither detonation nor defusing, the two methods currently available to neutralize IEDs, provide acceptable risk. Detonating the device is seldom practical in an u ...

The objective of this research is to develop beta versions of tools for automatically migrating radiation effects predicted in TCAD level tools to compact modeling tools. This transition will enable compact models that possess radiation effects to be quickly generated, which can then be used in circuit design activity. This approach is a substantial improvement over the current ad hoc approaches. ...