DARPA needs industry's help to develop hybrid analog/digital photonic/electronic processor
ARLINGTON, Va. – U.S. military researchers will brief industry next week on new project to develop a combination hybrid analog, digital, photonic, and electronicprocessor to help analyze RF and optical signals for situational awareness.
Officials of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Va., issued a special notice Friday (DARPA-SN-17-63) to announce a proposers day for the All-Signal Tactical Realtime Analyser (ASTRAL) program.
The Astral briefings will be from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on 18 July 2017 at the Executive Conference Center, 4075 Wilson Blvd., Suite 350, in Arlington, Va. This meeting will provide details of the upcoming DARPA ASTRAL program, take industry questions, and encourage companies to team for the project.
The future ASTRAL hybrid analog/digital photonic/electronic processor is to demonstrate real-time nonlinear cyclostationary and convolutional processing, as well as low-probability-of-intercept signal processing gain over input electromagnetic signals filling a bandwidth of 1 to 10 GHz.
The project also seeks to identify architectures and algorithms for military applications that are well-suited to real-time wideband hybrid analog,digital photonic/electronic use.
Related: DARPA looks to HRL Laboratories to develop photonic signal processor
The program seeks to develop and demonstrate a system for RF and optical electromagnetic signal surveillance, situational awareness, and understanding that improves current signal awareness speed and spectrum coverage by 1,000 times. This technology also should be suitable for mobile tactical operations.
Companies interested should register for the industry briefings online at https://safe.sysplan.com/confsys/astral no later than 4 p.m. this Friday, 14 July 2017.
The Proposers Day is at the collateral SECRET level. After the meeting attendees may meet individually with the ASTRAL program manager, Dr. Thomas Karr. Meetings can be scheduled by contacting DARPA's Carla Burch by email at [email protected], or by phone at 703-526-2235.
More information is online at https://www.fbo.gov/spg/ODA/DARPA/CMO/DARPA-SN-17-63/listing.html.
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John Keller | Editor
John Keller is editor-in-chief of Military & Aerospace Electronics magazine, which provides extensive coverage and analysis of enabling electronic and optoelectronic technologies in military, space, and commercial aviation applications. A member of the Military & Aerospace Electronics staff since the magazine's founding in 1989, Mr. Keller took over as chief editor in 1995.
