UK-based Cobham has launched a scalable family of gallium nitride (GaN) solid-state transmitter solutions. SOLSTx (pronounced 'solstice') is optimized for ground, maritime and airborne applications including air-traffic control, weather, telemetry, fire control, and long-range surveillance radars.
"The GaN-based solid-state technology on which SOLSTx is built offers a number of advantages over traditional systems such as increased mean time between critical failure (MTBCF), reduced operation and sustainment costs and, notably, significantly lower out-of-band emission which reduces interference with adjacent radars and communication signals," says Jeff Hassannia, senior VP of business development & technology for Cobham Advanced Electronic Solutions. "Our SOLSTx family of solutions is available in a variety of frequency ranges, power levels, packaging and end-market applications - all of which are leveraging commercial advances in GaN coupled with innovative power combining techniques," he adds.
Cobham says that its modular design approach also allows for a gradual degradation over the life of the hardware, in contrast to instantaneous shutdown as experienced with vacuum electronics devices (VED) such as magnetrons, klystrons, traveling-wave tubes (TWT) and crossed-field amplifiers (CFA) used in current transmitter designs.
With proven system power of 175kW in S-band, increased efficiency is offered through reduced size, weight and power. Cobham has a 175kW S-band SOLSTx available for viewing and demonstration at its Integrated Electronic Solutions facility in Exeter, NH.
