DICE

Digital Multichannel AESA for EW and Directed COM Multifunctionality

The outcome of this project is accelerating the introduction of wideband, digital multichannel AESA technology to the market. DICE is aimed at benefiting the Swedish defence capabilities, as well as the competitiveness of the Swedish industry.

Our GOALS

Our investigations are going to be divided in three main aspects of Active Electronically Scanned Arrays (AESAs):

Wideband digital AESAs and Multifunctionality

To produce wideband digital AESAs that can transmit and received in broadband.

Logical and physical architectures

Investigations on future RF front-ends and ADCs/DACs.

Radomes and AESAs

Fast simulation based on ray-tracing, including the integration of AESA with dielectric radomes.

About Us

This project will enable the collaboration on Active Electronically Scanned Arrays (AESAs) between SAAB (Järfälla), and the Division of Electromagnetic and Plasma Science (EMF) at KTH.

BACKGROUND

Technological development has enabled designing and manufacturing digital Active Electronically Scanned Arrays (AESAs), i.e. array antennas and physical architectures for wideband digital AESAs, including the RF front-end and with dedicated receiving and transmitting channels for each antenna element. Digital AESAs enables e.g., simultaneously forming high gain beams in different directions on the same received data.

Wideband digital AESAs is a potential game-changer for airborne systems. In particular, wideband digital AESAs would be very attractive in Electronic Warfare (EW). They may also enable multi-functional RF systems with negligible co-location interference. However, such wideband digital AESAs are still challenging due to high requirements on both digitization and data processing.

Expected Results

Master Theses

Two MSc theses will be co-supervised between KTH and SAAB in this project. The two prospective MSc theses are:

Marcus Allen: Designing a wideband array with lenses or a radome to extend the steerable sector
Marcus Wikner: Model an Array Based RF System and Assess Multifunctional Trade-offs sector

Co-authored papers

During the project, we are aimed at producing, at least, one paper submitted. In this manuscript, will include some of the results produced in this project, and it will be co-authored the members of SAAB and KTH.

Long-term collaboration

This project will enable the creation of a long-term relationship between the team in SAAB and KTH. We expect to continue with further collaborations after the results of DICE are achieved.