COFFEE program

DARPA, Industry Team Developing Advanced AESA Filters for Electronic Warfare

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is working with a group of companies leading the development of advanced active electronically scanned array technologies.

According to DARPA, the development of AESAs is a top priority in ensuring that the U.S. military maintains an advantage in electronic warfare.

In a previous release about the program, the agency explained that AESAs allow users to electronically steer radio wave beams instead of physically moving antennas.

The COmpact Front-end Filters at the ElEment-level program, or COFEE, is aimed at developing a new class of integrable filtering solutions for AESAs, DARPA said Wednesday.

Such technology is expected to mitigate interference and improve the performance of AESAs operating in challenging frequencies.

DARPA said the filter could impact the potentially thousands of tiny antenna elements on an AESA, most benefitting systems that are facing unacceptable size, weight, performance and interoperability limitations.

The industry team behind COFFEE includes Northrop Grumman, Raytheon Technologies, Akoustis, BAE Systems, Metamagnetics and a group of universities.

They will focus on developing a new class of resonators and integrable microwave filters. DARPA said that the effort will both address COFFEE’s technical requirements and set a precedent for future mm-wave filter projects.

COFFEE is part of DARPA’s over $1.5 billion Electronics Resurgence Initiative aimed at pushing next-generation communications technologies.

DARPA will hold a proposers day on June 17 for companies interested in participating in COFFEE. A related broad agency announcement will be published on SAM .gov, the agency added.