Office of Naval Research Grant for Revolutionary Spatial Sensing and Scene Characterization Technologies

Navy laboratories and warfare centers as well as other Department of Defense and civilian agency laboratories are also not eligible to receive awards under this BAA and should not directly submit either white papers or full proposals in response to this BAA. If any such organization is interested in one or more of the programs described herein, the organization should contact an appropriate ONR POC to discuss its area of interest. The various scientific divisions of ONR are identified at http://www.onr.navy.mil/. As with FFRDCs, these types of federal organizations may team with other responsible sources from academia and industry that are submitting proposals under this BAA.

University Affiliated Research Centers (UARC) are eligible to submit proposals under this BAA unless precluded from doing so by their Department of Defense UARC contracts.
Teams are also encouraged and may submit proposals in any and all areas. However, Offerors must be willing to cooperate and exchange software, data and other information in an integrated program with other contractors, as well as with system integrators, selected by ONR.
Some topics cover export controlled technologies. Research in these areas is limited to "U.S. persons" as defined in the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) – 22 CFR § 1201.1 et seq.

1. Over the past fifty (50) years, advances in image intensifier technology and long-wave and mid-wave infrared (IR) imaging systems have allowed our warfighters to conquer darkness and “own the night.” Unfortunately, that operational edge has largely disappeared due to wide spread proliferation of night vision technology. A significant challenge now facing the Navy and other services is high fidelity sensing in severely degraded environments, such as fog, clouds, rain, dust, smoke, and sea spray. Innovations in sensing could dramatically improve capabilities to navigate, detect and engage targets and improve situational awareness in a broad range of operational conditions. Approaches to sensing in degraded environments may be passive, i.e., wherein natural or man-made ambient sources of radiation are outside operator control, or active, wherein the user has some control over the spatial, temporal, spectral, polarization, and quantum properties of the scene illumination. Scene characterization can be achieved using any properties of the EM wavefront, including intensity, phase, polarization, angular momentum, spectral, temporal, statistical, or unique quantum characteristics such as entanglement. Specific spectral effects, such as the Christensen effect, can be employed to reduce scattering significantly and improve visibility through dust (i.e., silica particles). Polarization diversity has also been studied to enhance sensing through haze. By combining physical phenomenology with sophisticated multi-frame processing and reconstruction, and potentially including image priors, significant advances in scene characterization at stand-off distances may be achieved.

2. Transduction mechanisms at visible through IR frequencies are based primarily on irradiance detection. Other properties of EM wavefronts, such as coherence state, complex wavefront (including phase), spectral distribution, or state of polarization often carry useful information about a scene. New understanding of wave – matter interaction could lead to the direct transduction of these properties into an output signal, and enable revolutionary new sensing architectures. Alternatively, one could use irradiance sensors that have auxiliary structures integrated into them to map these properties of the EM wavefront into irradiance. Specific examples of such sensors are Angle Sensing Photodetectors or detectors with built-in wire grid polarizers for measuring the state of polarization. Such integrated sensor structures, when combined with dynamic front end optical elements and post-processing, can result in flexible multi-modal sensors for efficient extraction of task-relevant information from EM radiation.

3. Conventional designs for high resolution, wide field-of-view imaging systems are bulky and complex. It is desirable to establish lower bounds on the size and complexity of front end optics as a function of information extracted from the incident EM radiation. It is important that the analysis take into account substantial amount of prior information that is available to the sensing system as a result of scene and target models and the context provided by other sensing modalities. Furthermore, the specific task for which the sensor system is deployed (navigation, targeting, situational awareness) determines which information is relevant. For example, in obstacle avoidance sensors, the detailed information about the obstacle may be irrelevant, while its location and size are critical. A theoretical framework to analyze total resource requirements for such task-specific sensors is also of value to identify research directions for maximum payoff and points of diminishing return.

4. Most scene characterization systems consist of traditional imaging sensors, which may be augmented by spectral and polarization measurement subsystems. Such systems, being main stream, have the advantage of well-developed concepts and technologies for processing and exploitation, but they also generate a large quantity of data, much of it superfluous. The operational characteristics of such systems are often fixed at design and manufacturing time with only minor changes (focus, pan, tilt and zoom) possible by using mechanical movements (gimbals, motors, scanning mirrors). We seek radically different concepts in scene characterization systems that can be readily adapted to specific environments as well tasks in order to minimize resources without sacrificing performance. Such systems can be called Field Programmable Sensing Systems (FPSS). Concepts that lead to a framework for designing and fabricating such systems are one of the desired outcomes of this research announcement.

We wish to emphasize that the specific examples outlined above should be viewed as illustrative and not as an exhaustive list of topics of interest and should not limit the scope of the research proposed.

Navy laboratories and warfare centers as well as other Department of Defense and civilian agency laboratories are also not eligible to receive awards under this BAA and should not directly submit either white papers or full proposals in response to this BAA. If any such organization is interested in one or more of the programs described herein, the organization should contact an appropriate ONR POC to discuss its area of interest. The various scientific divisions of ONR are identified at http://www.onr.navy.mil/. As with FFRDCs, these types of federal organizations may team with other responsible sources from academia and industry that are submitting proposals under this BAA.

University Affiliated Research Centers (UARC) are eligible to submit proposals under this BAA unless precluded from doing so by their Department of Defense UARC contracts.
Teams are also encouraged and may submit proposals in any and all areas. However, Offerors must be willing to cooperate and exchange software, data and other information in an integrated program with other contractors, as well as with system integrators, selected by ONR.
Some topics cover export controlled technologies. Research in these areas is limited to "U.S. persons" as defined in the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) – 22 CFR § 1201.1 et seq.

Electronics technology enablers for wideband Simultaneous Transmit and Receive (STAR) capabilities

Background

The need for concurrent military antenna operations across wide spectral ranges in heavily congested electromagnetic environments continues to expand. Steady advances in RF and mixed-signal electronics technology continue to fuel increased system performance capabilities through the use of higher operating frequencies and broader bandwidths. Higher resolution for active sensors/imagers, higher data rate terrestrial and satellite communications links, and more effective electronic warfare (EW) and Information Operations (IO) are a few of the advances that high-speed electronics continues to enable. Many solid state device technologies from Silicon to Gallium Nitride, Niobium to Photonics, are contributing to these military system advances. Significant electronic challenges arise when these EW/IO, communications and radar systems are required to operate concurrently, with both transmit and receive functionality utilizing either a single aperture or multiple apertures. The concurrency problem is exasperated by the desire of each system to project more power from smaller overall platform footprints in order to maximize performance and minimize signature. While electronics technology advances have led to significant military antenna system performance gains, the ability to operate these systems concurrently in a STAR configuration without severe performance degradation continues to be severely lacking. The need for improved wideband STAR enabling electronics technology is the primary focus of this BAA.

Focus Area

The goal of this BAA is to stimulate innovative proposals that offer compelling advances in the radiation, reception, signal control and processing of microwave and MMW signals for Navy C4ISR systems. The primary focus is on STAR electronics enablers. Innovative solutions are sought in the specific areas of highly linear wideband receive electronics and low noise, high spectral purity transmit electronics. Highly linear low noise amplifier, mixer, filter, and analog-to-digital converter technologies that offer orders of magnitude receiver dynamic range improvement are sought. High spectral purity wideband RF transmitter designs possessing ultra-low noise characteristics are also sought. Both analog and digital transmitter designs are of interest, with a premium placed on power, noise, purity and dynamic range. Novel transmitter and receiver electronics that offer the highest potential performance advances and biggest effect on STAR operation should be highlighted. Wideband active and passive high isolation device and circuit technologies are of interest as they apply to STAR. Components of particular interest will operate wideband (at least an octave and preferably much wider) between 100 KHz and 100 GHz, with performance characteristics pushing extreme single aperture STAR capabilities. Linearity, noise, and bandwidth are the most important performance parameters that will be used to measure the potential STAR impact. Size, weight and power dissipated during operation will also be technology and level of innovation differentiators. Due to the complex trade space and broad range of performance parameters of interest, solutions which address many but not all of the aggressive component criteria will be considered. Proposed technologies should clearly articulate the potential impact to STAR operation.

To summarize these focus area interests, novel technical solutions to the following problem sets are sought:

a) RF receiver technologies/components that exhibit extreme linearity and useful dynamic range over very wide bandwidths even during high power transmit operations through the same or tightly coupled antenna (STAR operation)
b) RF transmitter technologies/components that best address the power, purity, noise and linearity performance requirements for high power wideband STAR operation

Offerors are requested to address specific receiver and/or transmitter chain components but in each case must demonstrate how the effort will advance the current state of the art, and discuss how the improvement will impact overall STAR performance. Complete receiver or transmitter subsystems are not sought; however proposals that chooses to address the overall system architecture should demonstrate how the proposed innovation will impact all the other functional blocks of the RF chain. It is understood that emerging electronic systems have an abundance of diverse requirements. Rather than tailoring this solicitation towards a specific requirement, the goal is to encourage component innovation and to advance performance significantly over the current state of the art.

Additional areas of interest: While advances in solid state device frequency performance have enabled significant performance gains in amplifier technology (both high power amplifiers (HPAs) and low-noise amplifiers (LNAs)), challenges remain in the overall efficiency, linearity, power output and bandwidth tradeoffs that current device technologies can achieve. A continuing ONR electronics interest area is to address current known device limitations in order to enable improvements in transmit/receive amplifier performance, especially related to device linearity and power density for millimeter-wave performance. In addition, ONR is receptive to other game-changing active and passive RF electronics component technologies that are outside the designated focus area but which can significantly impact the performance of Navy and Marine Corps electronic systems.

Work funded under a BAA may include basic research, applied research and some advanced technology development (ATD). With regard to any restrictions on the conduct or outcome of work funded under this BAA, ONR will follow the guidance on and definition of “contracted fundamental research” as provided in the Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition, Technology and Logistics) Memorandum of 24 May 2010. As defined therein the definition of “contracted fundamental research”, in a DoD contractual context, includes [research performed under] grants and contracts that are (a) funded by Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation Budget Activity 1 (Basic Research), whether performed by universities or industry or (b) funded by Budget Activity 2 (Applied Research) and performed on campus at a university. The research shall not be considered fundamental in those rare and exceptional circumstances where the applied research effort presents a high likelihood of disclosing performance characteristics of military systems or manufacturing technologies that are unique and critical to defense, and where agreement on restrictions have been recorded in the contract or grant.

Pursuant to DoD policy, research performed under grants and contracts that are a) funded by Budget Category 6.2 (Applied Research) and NOT performed on-campus at a university or b) funded by Budget Category 6.3 (Advanced Research) does not meet the definition of “contracted fundamental research.” In conformance with the USD(AT&L) guidance and National Security Decision Direction 189, ONR will place no restriction on the conduct or reporting of unclassified “contracted fundamental research,” except as otherwise required by statute, regulation or Executive Order. For certain research projects, it may be possible that although the research being performed by the prime contractor is restricted research, a subcontractor may be conducting “contracted fundamental research.” In those cases, it is the prime contractor’s responsibility in the proposal to identify and describe the subcontracted unclassified research and include a statement confirming that the work has been scoped, negotiated, and determined to be fundamental research according to the prime contractor and research performer.

Normally, fundamental research is awarded under grants with universities and under contracts with industry. ATD is normally awarded under contracts and may require restrictions during the conduct of the research and DoD pre-publication review of research results due to subject matter sensitivity. As regards to the present BAA, the Research and Development efforts to be funded will consist of basic research, applied research, and ATD. The funds available to support awards are Budget Activities1, 2, and 3.”

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