For much higher levels of output power, we have two distinct technologies that cover complementary frequency ranges, both based on wide bandgap semiconductors. These have inherent advantages over conventional semiconductors in terms of higher temperature of operation and higher breakdown voltage. These offer several exciting application options including a myriad of military communication bands at L-band and below, as well as future cellular phone base station amplifiers. For higher frequencies, we are developing a GaN based HEMT technology that has demonstrated high power performance at X-band and above. This enables a more efficient use of the semiconductor chip area and therefore higher power densities.
Power is distributed and combined through free space propagation.
We have demonstrated record power levels of up to 8W at 35 GHZ frequency. In a similar vein we have developed very promising techniques for controlling electromagnetic radiation, using a computational synthesis approach, with the resulting structures generally called photonic bandgap materials. Our antenna technologies are predominantly planar in nature with the most recent results supporting a low cost electronically scanned phased array development. In this exciting effort we have demonstrated an eight element X-band linear phased array that can scan over a 100 degree range without the use of expensive phase shifters. This promises to result in large cost savings, especially as the array scales to higher element counts.