Adaptive Phased Array Antenna Supports Hypersonic Flight Testing

When future hypersonic vehicles are tested far above the Pacific Ocean, the telemetry signals they transmit will be captured by a new type of modular antenna system developed by the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) in collaboration with prime contractor AV (formerly Blue Halo). 
 

Known as Advanced Phased Array Antenna Technology (APAT), the system uses Radio Frequency System on Chip (RFSoC) technology to process the signals directly on the antenna’s elements, allowing multiple signals to be tracked simultaneously in different directions. Both ground-based and airborne versions of the antenna technology have been built and tested for capturing the telemetry – data sent from the vehicles to monitor flight factors and conditions.
 

Built for the Pentagon’s Test Resource Management Center (TRMC), APAT uses commercial-off-the-shelf components paired with bespoke antenna elements and a custom system architecture to create a novel system with unparalleled operational flexibility. It is believed to be the largest all-digital antenna system ever designed by GTRI, which has been developing and building antennas for more than 25 years.
 

“We’re combining RF-efficient aperture design with an intelligently-selected RF front-end that goes directly to digital so that when they’re tracking these telemetry streams, they can track multiple streams simultaneously,” said Kevin Cook, a GTRI principal research engineer who is co-principal investigator on the project. “In earlier analog systems, you’d have to just pick a stream or split the array (or multiple arrays) and lose signal gain. But with digital, you can track as many streams as you want, limited only by the system’s processing power.”
 

Read more in the GTRI Newsroom