Nuvotronics is committed to transitioning this work to NASA applications for future radars and sensors for atmospheric and environmental monitoring. Compact high power transceivers are the backbone in several critical NASA missions for both communications and radar sensor sources. The PolyStrata based transceivers offer a scalable semi-hermetic system, compatible with different NASA airborne, high altitude UAVs and CubeSat platforms. Clouds are the single most important source of uncertainty in predictions of climate sensitivity. Remote sensing instruments capable of measuring humidity inside cirrus clouds on a global scale is needed. For this reason dual-frequency cloud-profiling radar, 94 GHz cloud profiling radar in the future Aerosol/Cloud Ecosystem Mission (ACE) are being planned for deployment. This transceiver has applicability to the Cloud and Precipitation Processes Mission (CaPPM) for vision beyond the GPM dual-precipitation radar (DPR). The goal is to mature these instrument concepts to the point that they are ready for integration into a future Earth-Science Satellite such as the Snow and Cold Land Process (SCLP) mission, or the draft requirements of the Global Cloud and Precipitation Mission (GPCM). Furthermore, synthetic aperture radar imaging, and other ground-based radars, utilize high power transceivers.
Millimeter operation offers tremendous opportunity for diverse applications such high data rate communication, synthetic aperture radar imaging and aircraft landing systems, but the challenges of creating microwave circuits become exponentially harder at these frequencies. Compounding an already difficult paradigm, these solutions need to address applications that are extremely cost sensitive and high volume (thus any solution must be mass producible). The PolyStrata technology offers a revolutionary solution by compartmentalizing all of the microwave "challenges" into a single integrated component that can be placed on a standard printed circuit board. In most long term forecasts, demand for mobile broadband data is insatiable. According to the FCC, "in a span of 10 to 15 years, the world's cellular operators increased capacity by 20x while demand increased by more than 100x". The transceiver Nuvotronics will be developing in this research will have many commercial applications in mm-wave radio solutions from point to point application to switch beam antenna array. Nuvotronics offers clean room assembly and RF test space dedicated for space products maintaining highly controlled processes, traceability, and quality for deliverables.
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