Award Data

Current continuous wave (CW) and pulse mid-wave infrared (MWIR) lasers have design and performance limitations that constrain their usability in some critical Air Force applications. There is an important need to create a new class of MWIR laser sources with less drawbacks and higher pulse energies and CW powers. The proposed work will demonstrate the technical feasibility of an innovative MWIR la ...

The radio frequency (RF) spectrum from frequencies below 100 kHz to over 95 GHz has become a crowded workspace for many commercial and military communications, navigation, and sensing applications. Across the spectrum, attenuation and noise levels determine channel and band usability, dynamically impacted by atmospheric physics, lightning, solar activity, unintended interferers, and, in hostile sc ...

Through the proposed Phase I Air Force STTR program, NanoSonic and Virginia Tech will demonstrate metal organic framework materials and electrospray fabrication methods for the manufacture of eye protection devices that are capable of controlling the amount of light transmitted through the device. The objective of this program is to 1) increase the dynamic range and speed of electronically switche ...

Legacy satellite command and control capabilities and their related telemetry operate in a largely stove piped framework. Satellites are still commanded, controlled, and communicated with their ground station in a specific constellation structure. Each ground station is unique to a given constellation and the communications and telemetry are aligned to the specific constellation, underscoring an o ...

High speed air vehicles operate at material strength performance limits and are at significant risk when subjected to additional localized heating that can result in softening, pitting and burn-through the material and potentially change the vehicle structural profile. These effects degrade aerodynamic performance. The team of CFDRC and UDRI proposed to develop, validate and deliver a comprehensiv ...

As both the response speed and sensitivity of thermal imagers have improved significantly over recent years, new IRSP systems are needed to provide greater dynamic range and faster response speeds. Addressing these issues, as well as producing a cost effective and modular IRSP system will be critical for providing quality scene projection for the next generation of infrared imagers. To address the ...

Recent technology advances have enabled the simulation community to achieve greater realism in virtual training environments, including physics-based simulated sensor views. As new methods for sensor view generation are developed, the lack of readily available supporting data to populate these specialized techniques limits their implementation. Currently the capability is not available to efficien ...

To understand how insects and crustaceans sense and process light fields, researchers need a projection system that provides realistic wide field of view (FOV), high-speed imagery from UV to red (320-650nm) that includes polarization control. Insects and crustaceans have vastly different visual acuity and wavelength response from humans. In addition, some can sense polarization. Therefore, commerc ...

The overall goal of the proposed research program is to develop a ruggedized imaging system capable of visualization and analysis of the particle field and product gases in a multiphase blast. This will be accomplished by combining kHz-MHz-rate burst-mode laser technology with tomographic particle field velocimetry (PFV) and new nonlinear particle tracking methods to resolve dense particle fields. ...

Truventic proposes to design, build and characterize a 5x5 array of fully functional MEMS-based plasmonic infrared scene projector pixels which operate at multiple wavelengths to support hardware-in-the-loop testing of missile seekers, forward looking IR cameras (FLIR), counter measure simulation and tracking systems. The approach avoids known limitations of resistive arrays and provides high dyna ...