Multifunction Phased Array Radar antenna panel backplane.

RF Technology

We develop RF technologies that improve the nation's radar, communications, and electronic warfare capabilities. Our efforts range from early-stage research into materials and components for RF systems to complete RF system development. Over the past decade, we have pioneered low-cost panel-based phased array technology, and today we are fielding this technology to provide the FAA and NOAA with one radar system that can perform both weather and aircraft surveillance. We are lowering the power needs, size, and weight of RF components through novel system-on-chip technology, enabling systems for increasingly small platforms like unmanned aerial vehicles and nanosatellites. Recently, we've innovated a phased array architecture that allows side-by-side transmitters and receivers to operate simultaneously without suffering from self-interference, overcoming a longstanding limitation of RF systems.

Featured Projects

A prototype reflectarray faces a feed horn in an anechoic chamber.
communications
A low-cost, reconfigurable radio receiver architecture provides an alternative approach to filter out unwanted transmissions in millimeter-wave (MMW) signals.
a photo of a small satellite in a studio
weather
A constellation of small satellites is collecting rapidly refreshed weather data to advance studies of hurricane structure and intensity and improve forecasts.
Researchers test the prototype standoff microwave imaging system. The antennas emit radio signals that reflect off the person standing in front of the array; the system processes the reflections to create the image on the monitors in the background.
advanced imaging
The system can rapidly and discreetly detect threat items concealed under clothes or hidden in bags of people in crowded public spaces.

Advancing Our Research

Featured Publications

Nearfield anechoic chamber and farfield on-site antenna calibration pattern comparison of an S-band planar phased array radar

Apr 27
IEEE Annual Conf. on Wireless and Microwave Technology, WAMICON, 27-28 April 2022.

Effect of a wet spherical radome on the reflected power for an S-band planar phased array radar antenna

Oct 24
2021 Antenna Measurement Techniques Association Symp., AMTA, 24-29 October 2021.

Analog coupled oscillator based weighted Ising machine

Oct 15
Sci. Rep., Vol. 9, No. 1, 15 October 2019, 14786.

Our Staff

View the biographies of members of the RF Technology group.