Radar and Phased-Arrays: Advances, Breakthroughs and Future
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RADAR AND PHASED-ARRAYS: ADVANCES, BREAKTHROUGHS AND FUTURE Dr. Eli Brookner Raytheon Company (retired); 282 Marrett Rd., Lexington, MA 02421 [email protected], Tel and Fax: +1-781-862-7014 Radar-2018, August, 27-30, 2018, Brisbane, Australia Keywords: Radar, AESA, phased arrays, metamaterial, radar for horizon search; adaptive digital beam forming; MIMO, Extreme MMIC, PATRIOT, JLENS, AMDR, SPY-3, handles 30 times more targets and has more than 30 times graphene, car radar, signal processing, Moore’s law. FPGA, Dig- sensitivity of SPY-1D(V).; uses GaN which is 34% less ital Beam Forming, carbon nanotubes, transistors, synaptic tran- costly than GaAs; GaN has 108 hour MTBF; antenna com- sistors, cloaking, stealth, COSMOS, ACT, DAHI. posed of 2x2x2 ft3 radar module assembly (RMA) building blocks; 4 line replaceable units (LRU) per RMA; each LRU Abstract: replaced in less than 6 minutes; fully programmable, 37 Moore’s Law is slowing down but still has a way to go. Potential RMAs produce a system that is equivalent to the SPY- further major advances of Moore’s Law via: Spintronics, Memris- 1D(V)+15dB, back-end radar controller built out of com- tors, Graphene, and Quantum Computing. Advances made in met- mercial off-the-shelf (COTS) x86 processors which allows amaterials include low cost electronically scanned arrays (ESAs), adapting to future threats by easy upgrading with future stealth, cloaking (invisibility), low profile VHF/UHF antennas, COTS processors eliminating obsolescence; S-band an- λ focusing < /2. PATRIOT upgraded to GaN active electronically tenna is scalable. Another development is the Zumwalt scanned arrays (AESAs) having 360o coverage without mechani- DDG-1000 stealth ship launched Oct. 28, 2013 with two cal rotation. The S-band AMDR handles >30 times more targets and has >30 times sensitivity of the SPY-1D(V). Can now put a more under development. It has the 3 faced X-band SPY-3 256 element 60 GHz transmit array on a chip. All the RF circuitry radar [1]. Lockheed Martin’s space fence radar uses digital for mm-wave radars is put on a chip. Such radars and phased ar- beam forming (DBF) at the element level for their dual po- rays could cost just a few dollars in future. Major advances made larized 86K element receive array using 172K A/Ds [71]. toward low cost printed flexible electronic circuits with diodes op- The JLENS (Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defence El- erating at 1.6 GHz. A low profile dual polarized tightly coupled evated Netted Sensor) blimp (airship) system [1] had been dipole antenna (TCDA) has been developed which provides a 20:1 deployed over Washington DC. It is nominally tethered at bandwidth and has λ/40 thickness. The latest type of phased array 10,000 ft to give it a look down capability. Has 360o cover- is the MIMO radar phased array which was claimed to provide age. It can detect a low flying cruise missile (CM) at a range orders of magnitude better accuracy and resolution as well as bet- ter GMTI performance than conventional arrays. However, as of 340 nmi, cues PATRIOT and TPY-2, has demonstrated summarized here, this author has shown that conventional arrays detection and tracking of ballistic missiles and intercept of can do just as well and possibly better if properly used without CMs. suffering MIMO’s signal processing load and waveform design problems. The trend by Raytheon and MIT Lincoln Laboratory to use commercial technology such as printed circuit boards 1. Radars Upgrades and New Developments (PCBs) and non-hermetically sealed packaging to achieve low cost AESAs for ground radars was reported on in [1]. This paper is an update to previous papers written by the Rockwell Collins is continuing this trend with the develop- author on the significant developments, trends and break- ment of an X-band airborne radar using PCBs for the array throughs in radar and phased-arrays [1-8, 56, 65]. The and low cost SiGe chips [46]. South Korea is also develop- big news relative to upgrades is the PATRIOT has a Gal- ing a low cost X-band array [58]. DARPA has an aggres- lium Nitride (GaN) active electronically scanned arrays sive revolutionary effort called Arrays at Commercial (AESAs) which gives it a 360o coverage without mechani- Timescales (ACT) program whose goal is to lower the pro- cal rotation [57]. It uses a 9ft by 13ft main antenna that is curement cost of new AESAs and ESAs by at least 80% bolted on and 2 quarter size rear antennas. It is a simple [59]. The ACT program is focused on shorter design cycles upgrade to apply to the 220 fielded systems. The back end and creating a commercial market approach for developing of the PATRIOT had already been upgraded by 2012 with antenna arrays. This program aims to make AESAs and a $400 million investment. With these upgrades the ESAs more affordable by offering common building block PATRIOT is a 2015 state-of-the-art radar. The system is components. The common building block modules can be backwards compatible. Raytheon has spent over $200 mil- used for diverse AESA and ESA programs and applications lion on the development of GaN. This upgrade reduces op- – radar, signal intelligence (SIGINT), electronic warfare eration and maintenance cost by as much as 50%. The im- (EW) and communication. The building blocks would be pressive performance of the Air and Missile Defense Radar easily upgradable so as to avoid obsolescence. They would (AMDR) has recently been released [68]. It has a 4-faced allow flexibility in system parameters by being reconfigu- S-band radar for air and missile defense, a 3-faced X-band rable which also reduces obsolescence. The building blocks would be for the antenna, called reconfigurable electromag- netic interface blocks, and for the circuitry following the antenna building blocks, called the common module, which are digitally connected. The program is also looking at co- hering AESAs and ESAs on different platforms. DARPA is investing $100 million for the ACT program with con- tracts having been given out to the leading AESA and ESA companies and research organizations: Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Rockwell Collins, HRL Laboratories, and Georgia Tech Applied Research. 2. New Technology and Advances 2.1.Extreme MMIC and Moore’s Law Figure 1. Extreme MMIC has gone from 4 T/R modules with its con- When I built my radio and oscilloscope for my high school trol circuitry on a chip at X-band [1, 2] with each T/R cost- laboratory class in the 1940’s I used vacuum tubes. They ing about $10 to a whole 256 element arrays on a chip at 60 3 GHz, [9, 10]. These phased array chips will not require cal- were about 1x1x2 in . Now 130 billion transistors go on a 128 GB memory stick 0.5X0.8X2 in3, smaller than one of ibration or will use built in test circuits What is driving this . my vacuum tubes. The memory stick fits in my pants back technology is the cell phone and WiFi business. From 2010 pocket. If you used the tubes I used in high school for this to 2020 the bandwidth demand is predicted to increase 1000 memory stick, when stacked sideways one on top of the fold and the number of mobile connected devices from 5 to other they would extend to a height 9 times the distance to 50 billon [10]. These array chips are expected to find in the the moon or equivalently about 90 times synchronous alti- next decade wide uses: for garage door openers, videos tude and have a 1X2 in2 footprint!!! This certainly would players and computers [10]. They will all talk to each other not fit in my back pocket. My 128 GB memory stick con- via high BW Wi-Fi. In the future compact, ultra-low cost taining 130 billion transistors cost me only $35. Using MIMO mm-wave multi-beam AESAs will be in everyday tubes it would cost $130 billion at $1 per tube. The power devices [10]. Car radars are also benefiting from extreme needed to run these tubes would be 130 GW each tube MMIC [11-13]. The 77 GHz car radar chip of [11] has all needing about one watt. This is equivalent to 130 nuclear the RF circuitry needed: 2 transmitters, 4 receivers and power plants. This comparison between what we get using LOs. Some feel in the future such car radar will cost only transistors and what it would take using tubes is summa- a few dollars. Ref.13 gives a commercial 24 GHz multi user rized in Fig. 1. This puts in perspective the amazing single chip radar. Autoliv has a car radar on a 3.5in by achievement made with integrated circuits for memory 2.25in board which includes a radar chip and a Texas In- storage over the last 70 years. This same comparison ap- struments signal processing chip that does Kalman Filter plies to our smart phones that have 128 GB of memory. We tracking [14]. They have manufactured over 2 million of talk about inflation. Because of inflation what used to cost them with the cost of the board being less than $100 [14]. $1 in the mid-forties now typically cost ten times as much Valeo Raytheon has developed a 25 GHz blind spot 7 beam or $10. But this is not true for electronics. With that dollar phased array radar costing only $100s of dollars from the we can today buy ~4 billion transistors, the equivalence of car dealer in purchases of one [1,15,16].