Unmanned Autonomous Vehicle (UAV) systems have become possible in recent history thanks primarily to the effects of Moore’s Law — the doubling of processing power every 18 months. This trend, coupled with improvements in sensors and actuators, has enabled the advanced signal and data processing necessary to control UAVs. However, the complexity of UAV systems has taxed traditional design workflows, and revealed numerous challenges such as shorter design cycles, greater performance and reliability demands, and cost constraints.

There are power supplies in virtually every military electronic system. These ubiquitous devices come in all sizes and power ratings. And just like their commercial counterparts, they are available in the AC/DC, DC/DC and DC/AC configurations that provide the appropriate electrical energy to operate the electronics.

The rapid evolution of commercial technologies such as Long Term Evolution (LTE) is becoming more attractive for Software-Defined Radio (SDR) and public safety applications ^[1,2]. They have the potential to support high data throughput applications with scalable subcarriers and the use of multiple antenna techniques such as Multiple-Input Multiple- Output (MIMO) technology.

Successful integration of an antenna onto a vehicle platform poses many challenges. Vehicle features impact antenna performance by blocking, reflecting, or reradiating energy, and co-site interference can impair the effectiveness of multiantenna configurations. Platform motion and environmental factors such as terrain and buildings may reduce system effectiveness in actual operational conditions. Furthermore, radiation hazards may pose risks to nearby personnel. Modeling and simulation provides a powerful tool to aid in understanding these issues and developing solutions.

Advanced Optical Technologies, Inc. (AOT) has been awarded a Phase 2 SBIR contract to develop a next-generation laser polarimeter for the US Army RDECOM CERDEC Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate (NVESD), traditionally known as the US Army Night-Vision Labs. The polarimeter will implement AOT’s polarization-components techniques (PCT), which apply machine-learning algorithms to polarimeter data for remote material classification.

According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the nation’s 360 ports and waterways remain especially vulnerable to attack from small vessels carrying improvised explosive devices, including radioactive dirty bombs. Intellicheck Mobilisa, a wireless-technology firm, will address the vulnerability with Aegeus, a buoy system that communicates in real time to the shore.

NASA has tapped a team of aerospace, military and academic researchers for a three-year project that could dramatically improve in-flight navigation capabilities for space vehicles, military air and sea assets, and commercial vehicles. The project, “Fast Light Optical Gyroscopes for Precision Inertial Navigation,” is intended to enhance the performance of a vehicle’s inertial guidance system by refining the optical gyroscopes that drive it. These highly sensitive gyroscopes, paired with accelerometers, measure a vehicle’s attitude or orientation based on its angular or rotational momentum in flight, and track its velocity and acceleration to precisely determine its position, flight path and attitude.