Ramona Adams
BAE Systems has developed a reconfigurable chip that is designed to help radio systems adapt to changing environments in the field.
The company said Tuesday the Microwave Array Technology for Reconfigurable Integrated Circuits chip was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as part of the Adaptive RF Technology program.
DARPA’s ART program aims to develop communication radio technologies with fully-adaptive and reconfigurable architecture.
MATRICs works to serve as a general-purpose chip that engineers can use to develop customized radio systems without the development cycles and engineering costs associated with application-specific chips.
Greg Flewelling, a senior principal engineer at BAE, said MATRICs covers a range of radio waveforms to help meet the design requirements of various systems such as wide spectrum awareness and adaptability to different signal environments.
MATRICs is built to support communications, electronic warfare and signal intelligence systems as well as platforms with light weight and low power requirements such as unmanned aerial systems and man-portable radios.
BAE also designed MATRICs to align with the Defense Department‘s Third Offset Strategy which aims to modify existing systems to accelerate the development and fielding of new technology.
