U.S. military researchers are asking for industry’s help in developing a combination hybrid analog, digital, photonic, and electronic processor to help analyze RF and optical signals for situational awareness. The project seeks to enable U.S. and allied warfighters to understand in near-real-time all the waveform details, source type and class, signal format, and geolocation of detected RF signals, as well as the information these signals carry and whether or not the information is encrypted.
The Department of Defense (DoD) conducts air, land, maritime, space and cyberspace operations which increasingly depend on access and control of full electromagnetic (EM) spectrum. Many layers of EM signals are leveraged for communication, command, control, intelligence, sensing and attack.
The EM signal environment is becoming crowded and cluttered, and DARPA anticipates it to grow exponentially more so as new technologies such as 5G wireless, drones, autonomous vehicles, and millimeter wave radar enter service. The EM environment is also used by adversaries to carry out ever-increasing electronic and cyber attacks to degrade US DOD’s ability to use electromagnetic spectrum resources in tactical and strategic military operations.
Real time Signal intelligence provide critical capability to DoD to know in real time exactly who is operating in the EM environment around them, what the adversaries are doing in it, what information adversaries are exchanging and, what the adversaries are learning about U.S. forces. The EM signal environment contains valuable information about the strategic and tactical order of battle of potential adversaries, their maneuvers and actions, and early indications of potential threats.
In order to have this superior knowledge and situational awareness, it is not sufficient to simply collect radio-frequency (RF) or optical signals—it is necessary to understand in near-real-time all the “externals” of the signals (waveform details, source type and class, signal format, geolocation, etc.) and much of the “internals” of them (the information carried on the signal, possibly encrypted or hidden).
The DARPA All-Signal Tactical Realtime Analyser (ASTRAL) program is interested in ensuring understanding of and access to the congested and contested EM environment of the battlefield, by exploiting innovative developments in hybrid analog/digital photonic/electronic processor technologies of wideband real-time signal processing in order to detect and exploit hidden EM signals in real time and accomplish high-value military signal intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) applications.
The analog photonic elements could take advantage of the wide bandwidth, wide optical dynamic range, ease of parrelization, and ability to implement multiplications by square-law detection that photonic technology offers. the digital elements, meanwhile, could implement general algorithms, low costs, and programming flexibility of electronics.
Photonic processors also have unmatched speeds and latencies, which make them well suited for specialized applications requiring either real-time response times or fast signals. One example is a front-end processor in radio-frequency transceivers. As the wireless spectrum becomes increasingly overcrowded, the use of large, adaptive phased-array antennas that receive many more radio waves simultaneously may soon become the norm. Photonic neural networks could perform complex statistical operations to extract important data, including the separation of mixed signals or the classification of recognizable radiofrequency signatures.
By greatly increasing real-time signal speed and spectrum coverage by 1000x or more, the ASTRAL program will enable superior EM signal awareness at the tactical edge with new technology suitable for tactical mobile units. The program will also greatly improve the capability of current computing and communication resources applied to EM awareness.
ASTRAL technology will enable U.S. tactical forces, in both traditional military environments and nontraditional environments (e.g. urban and “hybrid” conflict), to understand what adversaries are doing around them, anticipate adversaries’ future actions, and recognize potential threats. ASTRAL will provide an asymmetric advantage, by making adversaries’ EM sensing and communications transparent at the tactical edge.
ASTRAL’s real-time wideband hybrid photonic/digital processing can advance all fronts of DoD’s Electromagnetic Maneuver Warfare (EMW) strategy, with applicability to a broad range of DoD Joint functions – movement and maneuver, fires, network defense, command and control, intelligence, protection, and sustainment. The successful demonstration of ASTRAL technology and the identification of ASTRAL application architectures can potentially advance current U.S. capabilities to the level of multi-domain theater scale real-time EMW tactical operations.
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