AESA Comlinks: DID Reader Has Done Prior Research

AN/APG-77 Test In yesterday’s issue, DID covered a request from Australia’s military for information re: combat ID and forward air controller equipment, in preparation for a procurement initiative in that area. Seems only fair that the sharing should go both ways. In “Elec Tricks: Turning AESA Radars Into Broadband Comlinks,” DID chronicled some very intriguing work by Northrop Grumman and L-3 that turns advanced AESA devices into secure broadband data and communications links, as well as extremely effective radars. Dr. Carlo Kopp of Air Power Australia recently wrote to DID with this interesting addendum: “My PhD thesis project completed in 1999 involved the theoretical modelling required for the adaptation of AESAs as high speed long range datalinks and their adaptation to networking. It was a monster project involving around 1000 large scale simulation runs on a 60 CPU cluster (eq to a Cray) and ended up with a 480 page thesis… In practical terms Northrop-Grumman and L-3 have yet to hit the really hard problems…” Click to view diagrams Dr. Kopp, an academic and industry consultant based in Melbourne, Australia is currently involved in a major research effort to develop a highly secure wireless ad hoc networking protocol, as well […]