Small Business ERC Collaborative Opportunity to Speed Implementation of CASA Phased Array Ideas to Market

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Practical large-scale deployments of networks of dozens or hundreds of weather radars will require a commercially-available small radar technology that can be acquired, installed on existing infrastructure and maintained at low cost. FIRST RF believes that electronically scanned phased array technology is the essential enabling technology in this context since such radars can be deployed on the sides of buildings and towers operated with very low recurring maintenance costs. One of the challenges associated with phased arrays is long term system calibration. Calibration is imperative to maintain optimum operation because phased array antennas comprise of many RF electronic components requiring precise control to yield high gain antenna beam steering.FIRST RF Corporation is partnering with the CASA Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (University of Massachusetts Amherst) to develop and improve technology for observing, understanding, predicting, and responding to hazardous weather events. Together, FIRST RF and CASA desire to incorporate built-in-calibration into the Phase-Tilt weather radarbased on our collaboratively designed phased array radar platform, and utilize the new capabilities to collect high-fidelity data to research the effects of weather conditions on overall system performance and calibration functionality. The goals of this proposal are to: (1) Improve performance of our existing phased array technology by adding built-in calibration functionality; (2) Reduce time and cost of repairs by identifying specific components that have fallen out of specification, and reporting specific repairs needed, and; (3) Utilize the new built-in-calibration hardware to research the effects of rainfall conditions on loss and depolarization. Through this work the vision of the PIs is to provide affordable and high-performance radar platforms to produce high resolution data for research, education, and ultimately, public safety. The amount of data produced will provide many years of research opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students alike, and the data products from that research will not only aid in the understanding of the mechanisms of weather formation and prediction, but also directly aid in making time-sensitive critical decisions about weather events that impact lives.