EL SEGUNDO, Calif., (Oct. 10, 2002) – Raytheon Company has been awarded two contracts to develop the next-generation anti-jam technology for militarized Global Positioning System (GPS), the first step in production of the Digital Antenna Electronics (DAE) program for all Department of Defense aircraft.
Raytheon’s Precision Guidance Systems (PGS) organization was awarded a $1.9 million option to its Digital Antenna Electronics (DAE) contract with the U. S. Navy’s Space & Naval Warfare Systems Center for GPS anti-jam research and development. The contract modification authorizes Raytheon to develop, produce, and test DAE prototypes that are compatible with standard aircraft anti-jam antenna systems in preparation for competitive procurement of production DAE units. The DAE production effort is valued at $25 million.
Raytheon Systems Limited, a Raytheon Company located in the United Kingdom, has been awarded the other DAE contract option to continue development of an alternative design.
“DAE will offer a major near term improvement to the current analog standard until fully digital solutions are developed,” said Dimitri Theodorou, director of Raytheon PGS. “It will provide anti-jam protection superior to that achieved with existing analog systems, through the combination of innovative architectures, null-steering /limited beam-forming, and advanced signal processing techniques.”
The DAE will be compatible with current military receivers and will be capable of functioning with both the current and future modernized GPS signal structures, such as M-code and spot beam modes.
Precision Guidance Systems, an organization within Raytheon’s Space and Airborne Systems (SAS) business, designs and develops GPS Selective Availability Anti-Spoofing Module receivers, integrated navigation systems for weapons, hand held GPS products, airborne multi-mode receivers, and specialized naval guidance products. PGS is the industry leader in GPS anti-jam solutions, including analog and digital adaptive antenna systems and ultra-tight coupled GPS/INS systems.
With headquarters in Lexington, Mass., Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) is a global technology leader in defense, government and commercial electronics, and business and special mission aircraft.
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Information for Editors on GPS Anti-Jam Technology
GPS is widely used as a source for position, velocity, and time information on U. S. military platforms. However, the GPS signal is of low power and vulnerable to interference. Threats range from cheap, expendable, low-power jammers that can be widely distributed across an area of conflict, to medium and high-power ground and air-based jammers that can deny usage of GPS over hundreds of miles. The GPS Joint Program Office established the Navigation Warfare (NAVWAR) program in 1996 to address the electronic warfare threat to the GPS system. The NAVWAR program was tasked with protecting DoD and allied use of GPS during times of conflict, preventing its use by adversaries, and maintaining normal availability to the civil user outside the area of conflict.
The primary near-term solution to meet NAVWAR objectives involves fielding anti-jam antenna systems on weapons platforms. The present anti-jam antenna system in production, GPS Antenna System–1 (GAS-1), is an analog system with anti-jam capability limited to the formation of spatial nulls in the direction of interference. Over 1,000 units of the GAS-1 have been produced by Raytheon Systems Limited, in Harlow, UK. The GPS roadmap for user equipment anticipates a fully digital receiver with nulling/multi-beam steering as a long term solution. DAE offers a major near term improvement by using digital signal processing to enhance jammer suppression by providing a limited beam steering capability to assist in filtering out jammer noise, while preserving the current GAS-1 AE form, fit, and interfaces.
