Award Data

This proposed effort will focus on the design, development and analysis of a high voltage BST based varactor for tunable filter applications. The high voltage BST varactor will enable wide tuning range filters with high quality factor and increased power handling and linearity. Advanced filter design techniques will also be leveraged to increase the effective quality factor of the filter resonator ...

The Air Force needs tunable laser systems with high average power in the mid-infrared region of the spectrum for military applications including defense against heat-seeking missiles.Currently-fieldedlaser systems, based on nonlinear frequency conversion in periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN), have limited optical power at wavelengths between 4 m and 5 m because of intrinsic absorption in th ...

Nutronics, Inc. and Montana State University propose to develop an approach for non-linear control of hysteresis and incorporate (if necessary) integrated Multi-Input-Multi-Output real time control with this capability.Our control systems already include a proven high speed real time control approach to determine the optimal set of actuator commands that satisfy inter-actuator stroke limitations.O ...

Adaptive optics (AO) system performance is hindered by the mechanical limits of the deformable mirror (DM), namely stroke limits, interactuator stroke limits, and mechanical resonance.The nature of the multi-in multi-out (MIMO) control system does not lend itself well to notch filters to combat the mechanical resonances, and the stroke limits introduce non-linearities to the system.The traditional ...

This SBIR project will develop and demonstrate efficient electron emitter based on carbon nanotubecopper (CNT-Cu) composite for passive discharging of spacecraft in plasma environment. A spacecraft moving through harsh plasma environment collects electrons, which leads to the spacecraft charging up to several kilovolts. High voltage between different parts of the spacecraft can ignite arcing, whic ...

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) proposes the development of a composite laminate cathode coating based largely on consumer off the shelf (COTS) industrial materials functionalized to possess a low work function, negative electron affinity surface. The cathode coating is applicable to any surface of a spacecraft, regardless of shape or material, and allows passive one wire operation for spacecraft cha ...

Oceanit proposes to develop a system to characterize weak electromagnetic fields for the investigation of the effect of both thermal and non-thermal RF/magnetic fields on biological material, and to detect resulting biological impact of the energy deposited.

Nutronics, Inc. and Montana State University propose to develop and evaluate computational methods for a Volume Digital Holographic Wavefront Sensor (VDHWFS).VDHWFS based imaging offers the potential to provide the equivalent of wide field of view adaptive optics (AO) compensated imaging, but without the added complexity of AO components and hardware.Recent result for coherent imaging developed by ...

Phase I of this effort involves the creation of a comprehensive end-to-end model of a novel holographic polarimeter.The polarimeter that can be constructed based on our model will be able to determine the full polarization properties (Mueller matrix elements) of scattering, reflecting and absorbing media as a function of the materials depth.Unlike previous attempts, this system will be a real-time ...

Previous research indicates the digital holography (DH) methods when combined with model-based iterative reconstruction can solve the challenging problems posed by the need to image through deep turbulence real time. In this Phase I STTR research, we propose to analyze and design a high-performance computing system and associated Deep-turbulence Estimator for Anisoplanatic Propogation (DEAP) algor ...