Wideband, Adaptable, Modular, Scalable Digital Receiver Exciter (WAMS-DREX)

Colorado Engineering Inc. (CEI), with its teammates the University of Colorado (CU) and Lockheed Martin, proposes to leverage its collective expertise with radar systems design, mixed signal board design, and radar signal processing to research, identify, and develop methods of implementing radar subsystems that will perform as many functions as possible in the digital domain. The findings will facilitate Wideband, Adaptable, Modular, Scalable Digital Receiver Exciter (WAMS-DREX) technology enabling leading-edge radar capabilities and performance. Advanced radars often employ highly digitized sub-arrayed digital beamforming (DBF) architectures and Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output (MIMO) radar technology. Both approaches require tight calibration and coherency across channels to achieve their full benefit, and analog components in the transmit and receive chains lead to additional noise and errors due to performance drifts over time and temperature. The problem becomes more challenging when wideband waveforms are considered. The team has decades of hands-on design and integration experience with a variety of radar systems and associated hardware, software, and signal processing algorithms. Under this proposed program, the team will research and develop techniques to move the digitization function closer to the antenna. The proposed effort will also employ scalable, modular receiver/exciter technology as a test bed and deployment platform.