Award Data

The US Army and Marines rely significantly on fossil-fuel based tactical power generation to provide electrical energy to deployed troops in small camps and forward operation bases. These generators are sized to support the expected maximum power but are often operated far below rated power due to the dynamic nature of electrical loads. On average, the generators are loaded less than 50% of the ...

New enhancements to mobile computers including smaller sensors, displays and powerful processors have made them much more attractive for the battlefield, not only as wearable systems for soldiers, but also unattended ground sensors a warfighter can leave behind for situational awareness. Unfortunately, while the technologies for hands-free interfacing have improved greatly, the challenge of limiti ...

There are many different RF devices used in military networks. It is highly desirable to have scalable networks, where new devices can be readily installed without hardware or software changes elsewhere in the network. It is known that achieving this goal

As infrared (IR) electo-optical sensors improve in both availability and quality a strong need exists to have comparable improvements in the performance of military obscurants within the IR band. Conventional approaches for creating effective IR obscurants have relied primarily on shaped metal particles with high aspect ratios (e.g. rods, flakes). While efficient it is difficult to create very ...

The proposed project will focus on the development of closed loop frequency control hardware and algorithms for control of high quality factor tunable microwave filters based upon evanescent mode resonators. The developed controller will be integrated with a representative filter. As a system demonstration, the integrated filter/controller module will then be applied to a next generation frequency ...

Millimeter-wave RADAR imaging holds significant promise for many applications from rotorcraft DVE mitigation to standoff security screening. A key challenge of this imaging modality, however, has been the implementation of an effective method for creating an image without relying on either mechanical scanning or expensive, high SWAP phased array techniques. Herein, we present a concept for creat ...

Fuel cell technology as a clean and efficient energy source has several advantages for military applications, including lower weight, better safety, shorter down time (no recharge time, unlike secondary batteries), and lower heat signature (as compared to combustion engines). Ethanol has the advantage of being nontoxic and less flammable, which are attractive features for both military and comme ...

This Phase II SBIR project will continue the development of an optical sorter that will be used to estimate drop sizes in sprays. The optical sorter will determine the size of drops in the 0.1 to 10 microns range. Drops in this size range are prevalent in the automobile industry, where the fuel injection pressures have increased tremendously over the past two decades. These newer injectors provide ...

To reduce size, weight, power and cost (SWaP-c), military platforms have been evolving towards more integrated platforms that utilize all available space. For radiating systems, this will require exploring innovative design methods, materials and manufacturing approaches to realize cost-effective, customizable and conformal antennas. An attractive solution to this challenge is offered by additive ...

This project aims to develop a low-cost millimeter-wave (mmW) imaging system for ground vehicles, to operate in combination with a long-wave infrared (LWIR) camera. Such a system will mitigate the challenges of driving in degraded visual environments (DVE) including night time, fog, dust, or smoke by providing real-time image of the vehicle surrounding independent from the presence of naturally oc ...