Army Research Laboratory seeks Next Generation Radar (NGR) building blocks

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U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) Advanced RF Technologies - W911NF12R001103 - Federal Business Opportunities: Opportunities

Title:          U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) Advanced RF Technologies  
Sol. #:         W911NF12R001103
Agency:         Department of the Army
Office:         Army Contracting Command
Location:       ACC-APG - RTP
Posted On:      Jul 27, 2015 1:54 pm
Base Type:      Special Notice
Link:           https://www.fbo.gov/notices/a9244f295a3e871b2af8a7d41c6e7445

U.S. ARMY RESEARCH LABORATORY (ARL), Sensors and Electronic Devices Directorate (SEDD) Advanced RF Technologies

The U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) Electronics and RF Division (E&RF) is announcing a basic research (6.1) opportunity open to all academic, industrial and other government researchers to develop, fabricate and demonstrate a Next Generation Radar's (NGR) modular building blocks. The Division will, via the U.S. Army Contracting Command discussed below, let Cooperative Research Agreements (CRA) that focus on four (4) underpinning research areas, also detailed below, to develop, fabricate and demonstrate these modules. The CRAs let under this action will investigate new approaches to meet these modular expectations for Army's NGR. The research being executed under this action will tap into external high risk, high payoff approaches that will enhance our in-house multimode scalable investigation for Air Defense and Counter Rocket And Mortar (C-RAM) applications. The NGR is a joint Communications Electronics Research Development Engineering Center (CERDEC) , Aviation Missile Research Development Engineering Center (AMRDECO and ARL program with Fires Center of Excellence and Program Management Office (PMO) interest.

Army (and other DoD) Force Protection Radars include handheld, vehicle mounted and airborne configurations to support the following missions: Forward Operation Base (FOB) Protection that includes Dismount Detection, Air Defense, C-RAM. Size, Weight, Power and Cost (SWaP-C) continue to drive technology challenges for significant twenty first century advancements over our adversaries. The main thrust of this action is to address RF devices, components and architectures that are frequency agile across a spectrum along with supporting signal processing techniques that are adaptive to both the congested and contested environment while addressing the variety of potential threats.

Specific BAA Research focus areas:

• 1.2.6.b) Signal processing approaches for handling the adaptive and frequency-agility requirements, while enhancing target detection and tracking capabilities. Power efficient processing along with an open architecture implementation plan.
• 1.2.6.d) Advanced linearization studies - the multiple band and large instantaneous bandwidth requirements will also necessitate higher linearity front end components both integrated and extrinsic.
• 1.2.7) Complex vector modulation for developing spectrally pure intermediate frequency stages. Enhanced wideband receiver sensitivity for dynamic transmitter allocation enabling simultaneous transmit and receive requirements.
• 1.2.9) Highly integrated front end technology that exploits a wide range of power levels at high power added efficiencies. Reconfigurable requirements are needed between a power amplifier mode and a high dynamic range low noise amplifier. Strategies for heat removal will also be considered for amplifier performance enhancements.