While the Defense Department continues to tap technological advances to reshape the U.S. military in to an integrated effective force for this century, there are many challenges to surmount before accomplishing the goals. Hence, efforts continue on all fronts to streamline the armed forces at a rapid pace. From components to end systems, the Defense Department continues to exploit the latest advances in semiconductor chips, circuit design, power electronics, RF and microwaves, and a host of other related technologies to make sure that the military systems are much more sophisticated and reliable. And, thereby, guarantee operations with more advanced features and performance better than the last war.

Toward that goal, the Defense budget has been surged for the next five to 10 years to rapidly build new systems, both for the battle ground and homeland security. To speed the pace of military developments, there are also efforts to adopt these new technologies at a much higher rate than previously done. Concurrently, with experience of decades, the government has also become wiser. Sincere efforts are under way at all government and military levels to cut unnecessary waste, and effectively utilize the dollars spent.

To give the readers a feel for some of the latest developments on the RF and microwaves front, RF Design's Defense Electronics supplement has again invited three companies to shed light on three different technologies that promise to drive military systems to a higher plane of unprecedented performance.

• In order to obtain precise information, military communications systems must accurately decipher complex waveforms. That means the simulation tools must possess the ability to generate first such complex waveforms for evaluation. That onerous task of crafting realistic waveforms with which military systems can be accurately evaluated has finally been cut down to size. The most effective way by far to effectively evaluate how well a radar or communications receiver will perform in its actual operating environment is to stimulate it with the most realistic signals possible. While implementing this is a tedious, difficult task when evaluating commercial wireless systems, it is a vastly more complex job when it comes to electronic warfare systems, wherein the incoming signals can be extremely complicated. Fortunately, by combining the power of vector signal generators and software, it is finally possible to dramatically reduce the difficulty of all these tasks, so that receiver performance can be evaluated in a fraction of the time using more realistic information. In the article titled “Phase-coherent test system for multireceiver applications,” Agilent Technologies' John Hutmacher demonstrates evaluation of phased-array radars and other systems employing multiple receivers without field testing using a system of phase-coherent signal generators that accurately simulates actual signal conditions.

• Latency or delay due to transmission of the data between points or nodes in a network can cause a significant impact to accurately processing and interpreting data obtained from a variety of sensors or data acquisition systems. For example, very short latency between the measurement of an aircraft navigation sensor and its input and processing by a mapping program can cause large errors in an aircraft's position displayed by the operator. Addressing such synchronization challenges in a multisensor network is not trivial. Fred Mohamadi of TiaLinx proposes a novel synchronization method that tackles synchronization challenges in a multisensor network in the article titled “Data timing is critical in distributed systems.”

• Electronic power solution for today's military space applications requires design and manufacturing processes that provide a reliable product with the highest degree of confidence. The solution must include radiation-qualified components, proven design heritage and design innovations. Inclusion of hybrid assembly is essential in reducing size, weight and cost. Design analyses and computer simulations with actual performance to match are expected. Written procedures for design verification, acceptance tests and manufacturing processes are program standards. In this article, “Military satellites pose engineering challenges in DC-DC converter development,” Tiva Bussarakons of International Rectifier Corp. takes us through the complete process of developing a dc-dc converter for military space applications.