Million element ISIS array

Author

Clark, Tim ; Jaska, Esko

Author_Institution

DARPA, Arlington, VA, USA

fYear

2010

fDate

12-15 Oct. 2010

Firstpage

29

Lastpage

36

Abstract

The DARPA ISIS Program is developing and demonstrating technologies to enable a stratospheric airship-based dual-band active-array radar system. The antenna is a UHF and X-band shared aperture with backend digital beamforming. ISIS achieves unprecedented airborne radar performance through use of a large antenna aperture instead of high transmit power. The low-power-density aperture has an areal mass density of only 2 kg/m². A conceptual future system achieves 360° azimuth coverage using a cylindrical antenna of 36m height and 50.5m diameter. A small demonstration system scheduled for launch in 2013 has a UHF antenna cylinder 8m high and 22m in diameter. A 98m² rectangular section of this cylinder is populated with active X-band elements. The dual-band array has total receive and overhead power consumption, including off-array components, of only 5W/m².

Keywords

UHF antennas; active antenna arrays; airborne radar; aperture antennas; multifrequency antennas; DARPA ISIS program; UHF antenna cylinder; X-band shared aperture; active X-band element; airborne radar performance; antenna aperture; backend digital beamforming; cylindrical antenna; dual-band array; low-power-density aperture; million element ISIS array; stratospheric airship-based dual-band active-array radar; Apertures; Finite element methods; Radar antennas; Radar tracking; Spaceborne radar; Target tracking;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Phased Array Systems and Technology (ARRAY), 2010 IEEE International Symposium on

Conference_Location

Waltham, MA

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-5127-2

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4244-5128-9

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ARRAY.2010.5613396

Filename

5613396