These design parameters are more stringent than those needed to operate aboard a Global Hawk, she shares. Looking ahead, she foresees the potential for an additional intelligence capability being added to this system. Its receivers, after all, are types of sensors. An airborne platform with a situational awareness capability offers many potential applications in battlefield intelligence, and planners might seek to add new digital processing capabilities in the near future. So, this system is being designed to leave room for additional elements that would take advantage of its assets.
Several technologies are key to the development of an operational system.
Mitigating cosite radio frequency interference among the 75 emitters will require active cancellation and frequency-hopping multiplexing or filtering. Reichlen reveals that some interesting antenna designs are being proposed. Primary needs include conformal and meanderline broadband antennas. Control, switching and networking present a complex engineering problem encompassing message formatting, a host of encryption algorithms and keys, and a mobile internetworking overlay for the system's 75 channels and 17 waveforms. Each team is taking a different approach to designing the system, Reichlen says.