Defence company BAE systems has developed a new chip which helps communications and electronic warfare radio systems adapt in nanoseconds.
The Microwave Array Technology for Reconfigurable Integrated Circuits (MATRICs) chip helps address the future requirements of communications, electronic warfare, and signal intelligence systems. It is designed to help engineers to develop customised radio systems without the need for application-specific chips that can be expensive and time consuming to develop.
“MATRICs is a radio frequency toolbox on a chip,” said Greg Flewelling, a senior principal engineer at BAE Systems.
“It covers a broad range of radio waveforms so that many different types of systems can be designed around it, including ones that need wide spectrum awareness and adaptability to dynamic and challenging signal environments.”
The MATRICs chip lets engineers create rapid prototypes and working systems that can be fielded faster and can accelerate the speed of delivery for new technology.
Flewelling said, because it operates over a wide spectrum of radio signals, systems based on the MATRICs chip can benefit from reduced size, weight, and power, making it suitable for applications such as unmanned aerial platforms and man-portable radios, where light weight and low power are at a premium.
The chip was developed with funding from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), as part of its Adaptive RF Technology program (ART), which aims to advance the hardware used in radios that can reconfigure themselves under a range of environmental and operating conditions.
The speed of delivery from concept to the field is a critical component of the US Department of Defense’s (DoD) Third Offset Strategy, which has created a demand for agile systems that can efficiently address changing conditions in real-time as new advanced technologies emerge. The DoD strategy also focuses on the need for accelerated development and the rapid fielding of new technology by modifying existing systems, concepts that are at the core of MATRICs’ flexible design.
[Photo: BAE Systems]
Defence will be a major topic of discussion at the Australian Engineering Conference 2016 in Brisbane on November 23-25.