Electromagnetic Spectrum and Bandwidth

By combining complementary mindsets on the leading edges of electronic and radiofrequency device engineering, a pair of researchers in DARPA’s Young Faculty Award program have devised ultratiny, electronic switches that approximate inter-neuron communication. These highly adaptable nanoscale switches can toggle on and off so fast, and with such low loss, they could become the basis of not only computer and memory devices but also multi-function radiofrequency (RF) chips, which users might reprogram on the fly to behave first like a cell-phone’s signal emitter but then, say, as a collision-avoidance radar component or a local radio jammer.

Solid-state electronics began to overtake vacuum tubes in radios, computers and other electronic and radio frequency gadgetry more than 60 years ago. Now we live in a Silicon Age. Even so, vacuum electronic devices, whose origins date to the 19th century, touch our lives every day.

Since the advent of the integrated circuit in 1958, the same year the Advanced Research Projects Agency was established, engineers have been jamming ever more microelectronic integration into ever less chip real estate. Now it has become routine to pack billions of transistors onto chips the size of fingernails.

A newly-announced DARPA program is betting that unprecedented on-chip integration of workhorse electronic components, such as transistors and capacitors, with less-familiar magnetic components with names like circulators and isolators, will open an expansive pathway to more capable electromagnetic systems. The Magnetic, Miniaturized, and Monolithically Integrated Components (M3IC), program will orchestrate research into miniaturized magnetic components with a goal of catalyzing chip-based innovations in radar and other radio frequency (RF) systems—and satisfying growing military and civilian demands for new ways to maneuver within the increasingly crowded electromagnetic spectrum.

Laser beam-steering is a critical enabler for military and civilian applications including autonomous navigation, chemical-biological sensing, precision targeting and communications. Current beam-steering systems often rely on large, slow, opto-mechanical devices such as the optical gimbal. The gimbal, however, tends to be the largest, slowest and most expensive component in the optical system. Drawing on phased array concepts that revolutionized RADAR technology, the Short-Range, Wide Field-of-View Extremely agile, Electronically Steered Photonic Emitter (SWEEPER) program will develop a compact, agile alternative to mechanical beam-steering.