Adaptive Matching Networks for Radar and Electronic Warfare Transmit Amplifiers

The Navy desires increased Radar and Electronic Warfare system power and efficiency. One opportunity for increasing efficiency lies in the final solid state transmit amplifier. Typical designs use passive impedance matching networks for efficient power transfer between components. It is difficult to achieve wide frequency bandwidths, high efficiency, and high power through traditional approaches. It may be possible to achieve these objectives through the use of adaptive matching networks with instantaneous narrow band performance that is tunable across a wideband. Research areas include adaptive matching network concepts, tuning optimization strategies, and component design trades. The Navy hopes the applied research topic conducted within this Microgrant focuses on investigating methods to achieve high efficiency, broadband sensor systems, includes some mapping to long range research and development plans, and electronic warfare community of interest(COI) Science & Technology. The purpose of this research is to better understand the gap and provide more research opportunities aimed for technology transition.