HRL Laboratories scientists are aiming for a disruptive improvement in radar, electronic warfare, and communications capabilities they hope will be enabled by their new project. If they are successful, the W-band, nitrogen-polar gallium nitride low-noise amplifier could be the world’s first such device, launching a new generation of defense-oriented electronics applications with a possible improvement of 4 times the output power in W bands over HRL’s existing technology.
Dan Sievenpiper earned his PhD in 1999 from UCLA, where he invented the high-impedance electromagnetic surface. Dan joined HRL Laboratories later that year, and during the next 11 years, Dan and his team developed new electromagnetic structures with an emphasis on small, conformal, tunable, and steerable antennas.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded HRL Laboratories, LLC, funding to research novel ways to synthesize semiconductors for sensing in the infrared spectrum, and methodologies to cost effectively integrate the infrared materials with silicon read-out integrated circuits (ROIC).