Cobham Advanced Electronic Solutions (CAES) announced a capability to develop new mmWave active electronically scanned arrays (AESAs) for airborne early warning radar, intercept or acquisition control, ballistic missile warning and acquisition surveillance, mapping and missile tracking and guidance applications. Frequencies under development include Ka-Band and W-Band. Due to the technical challenges of deploying AESA architectures in this frequency range, CAES is one of only a handful of organizations with the capability to develop such solutions.
“Our AESA technology incorporates the best capabilities from our broad portfolio of technologies, representing an integrated aperture to data architecture. As one of only a handful of companies able to provide this capability, CAES is able to achieve this milestone due to our legacy in antenna and aperture design and mastery of the front end of advanced systems combined with our familiarity with the needs of aerospace and defense customers.,” said Jeff Hassannia, senior vice president of Business Development, Strategy and Technology for CAES. “It is critical to offer cutting-edge sensor technologies in partnership with our customers to deliver solutions aligned with program needs and the needs of our warfighters. We are very excited about this.”
“Advanced packaging of System-on-a-Chip (SoC) solutions with fully integrated subsystems widens opportunities to deliver this strategically important technology to defense primes and key subsystem providers. Its modular, extremely scalable design allows system designers to deploy anywhere from a few elements to thousands, as the application requires,” he continued.
The CAES mmWave AESA leverages SoC Integrated Circuit (IC) technology and innovative packaging techniques such as flip chip and bumped die. Additionally, it boasts higher transmit power and rugged assemblies for integrated multi-channel GaN transmit/receive MMIC.
The evolving MIMO feature offers extended virtual receive channels, improved angular resolution and interference immunity associated with digitally coded channels. These extended capabilities will also offer improved range resolution, better signal to noise ratio at similar frame rates, and faster updates with short system cycles. The system will also switch between phase array modes and massive MIMO processing mode or a combination thereof. Advanced digital processing ICs utilizing these capabilities result in 4D detection datasets with spatial position and velocity for many targets.