News

20 May 2009

 

DARPA awards Northrop Grumman Terahertz Electronics contract

DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has awarded Northrop Grumman Corporation of Los Angeles, CA, USA phase 1 of its $37m Terahertz (THz) Electronics contract. The contract is for the development of active receivers and transmitters operating at 670 gigahertz for military and space satellite applications.

"The THz Electronics program will develop a technology for integrated circuits operating at far higher frequencies than ever possible before. This will be crucially important for emerging applications like terahertz communications and radars," said Dr Mark Rosker, program manager of DARPA's Microsystems Technology Office. "But of potentially even greater consequence, this program will drive the state of the art in high performance III-V electronics, with vast implication to RF circuits and systems operating at more conventional (microwave and millimeter-wave) frequencies."

The THz Electronics program is an extension of Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems' successful $7.7m phase 1 of development on the Sub-millimeter Wave Imaging Focal Plane Technology (SWIFT) DARPA program. SWIFT demonstrated the first active components, such as oscillators and amplifiers (low-noise and power) operating at 340 GHz, enabling systems for high-resolution imaging at sub-millimeter frequencies in all types of weather environments encountered by space and defense satellites.

As with SWIFT, the current program will be supported by the US Army Research Laboratory.

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