HRL Laboratories has signed a $9.36 million deal with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop the Electronics for G-band Arrays (ELGAR) program.
The objective of the program is to integrate modern technologies into radio-frequency (RF) systems for communications. ELGAR is expected to be complete by January 2024.
The program will benefit the commercial and defense communications sectors by increasing operating frequencies to G-band levels (such as 5G and 6G), according to DARPA’s Broad Agency Announcement document.
The G-band’s upper millimeter-wave range from 110 to 300 Gigahertz is an underutilized portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that would work best for military communications due to its low-level atmospheric interference, DARPA said.
However, RF-based telecommunication has not yet been sufficiently incorporated in this wave capacity. The agency stated that the model’s efficiency “should be addressed to make G-band systems viable.”