DARPA’s ultrahigh speed Analog-to-Digital converter (ADC) to improve performance of Radar, Electronic Warfare and Communications

Our society is highly connected through various digital services. However, much of the information we exchange and process is of an analogue nature in its origin. Analogue-to-digital conversion is thus already an integral part of our modern digital society. Digital signal processing is a powerful technique for storing, analysing and manipulating digital signals. Ultimately, the quality of the signal to be processed is determined by the performance of the analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) which is used to sample the original analogue signal in the first place and produce a digital representation of it, writes Dr Chin.

Electronic ADCs are embedded ubiquitously in numerous everyday items, such as mobile phones, digital cameras and computer mice. As the speed of electronic ADCs continues to increase, more and more sophisticated applications including medical imaging, 60GHz wireless communications and cognitive radar can benefit from the use of ADCs and digital signal processing, which are all important to our society and economy.

The performance of digital receivers used in modern military radar, communication, and surveillance systems is often limited by the performance of the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) used to digitize the received signal. Ultrafast ADCs are critical in military applications such as military software-defined radio, radar, and electronic counter-warfare (ECW) that require high sampling rates and large bandwidths.

U.S. Defense Department researchers recently announced the development of an analog-to-digital converter chip that processes  signals  at the previously unheard of rate of 60 billion times per second—fast enough to process vast majority of radar, communications and electronic warfare signals  in contested and congested electromagnetic environments.

Competition for scarce electromagnetic (EM) spectrum is increasing, driven by a growing military and civilian demand for connected devices. As the spectrum becomes more congested, the Department of Defense (DoD) will need better tools for managing the EM environment and for avoiding interference from competing signal.