Award Data

America"s ballistic missile defense system provides the only means currently available to protect it, and its allies, from a catastrophic attach by nuclear or conventionally armed ballistic missiles. A critical component of that system is the Interceptor missile, which relies of a number of electro-explosive devices (EEDs) to perform reliably in order to successful carry out its mission. MDA is s ...

This proposal will address the development of a wideband digital receiver and exciter (DREX) technology for next-generation scalable missile-defense radar. A DREX is currently being specified at the sub-array level to feed an analog tile or panel subarray in order to generate flexible waveforms and beams with improved performance. The technical challenge is to meet the required receiver sensitivit ...

Electrically Solid Propellants (ESP) are a new class of energetic material that can be formulated as a pyrogen having several safety advantages over BKNO3. These ESP are inherently safe from accidental ignition being controllable via electrical power input. When an ESP is fitted with electrodes and a current of the required voltage is applied, it ignites and continues to energetically burn until ...

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 ...

Cities must perform detailed assessments of sidewalks and streets, including curb ramps, pedestrian signals, crosswalks, street furniture, and other components to determine compliance with the Public Rights-of-Way Accessibility Guidelines. However, current assessment methods are inadequate or unreasonable due to time and resources required. The objectives of this project are to: 1) develop elect ...

Positioning and navigation have become a mainstay of everyday life in the U.S.; applications of interest include navigation of vehicles of all kinds, infrastructure mapping, and safety of life systems. Many of these recent applications have become possible through the GPS. With the recognized vulnerabilities of GPS, it is evident that equivalent backup systems must be developed. One possible so ...

Through theoretical analysis and experimental testing ASI will ascertain the suitability of using gas plasma to develop a high-powered, reconfigurable antenna operating in the S and X-bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. This design concept would be usedto detect and track ballistic missiles. We will use a

GPS receivers are heavily used in aviation for both visual and instrument flights. There is a need for a backup system so that enroute and non-precision approaches can be flown without reliance on ground based systems should GPS be unavailable. We propose to use barometric pressure, airspeed, low-cost inertial sensors, three-axis magnetometer along with high-fidelity geomagnetic models, and an ...