NuWaves Engineering has announced they have been awarded a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) to develop and test an advanced triplexer in support of AFRL’s Global Positioning System (GPS) technology development program. Under the AFRL-sponsored technology development effort, NuWaves Engineering and Exelis Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Harris Corp., will investigate, design, fabricate and test an innovative broadband, high-power-handling, low-insertion-loss triplexer designed to work on the GPS navigation payload. During Phase I the team designed and prototyped a GPS L1 band cavity filter and subjected the unit to multipaction testing in order to gain important insight to apply to the Phase II development plan. In Phase II the team will incorporate advanced filtering and cross-coupling techniques to minimize loss and maximize bandwidth, while also maintaining high isolation between channels.
“The combination of NuWaves’ advanced filter and multiplexer design capabilities with Harris’ system expertise and in-house qualification testing capabilities is expected to pay dividends,” said Jeff Wells, President and CEO of NuWaves Engineering. “The team looks forward to delivering an affordable solution that the Air Force can count on to meet their GPS performance requirements today and into the foreseeable future.”
“Harris Corp. navigation technology has been on every GPS satellite ever launched,” said Joe Rambala, vice president and general manager of the GPS business at Harris. “The entire program benefits from high-quality partners like NuWaves.”
