Under the terms of the Army Phase II SBIR Fast Track contract, Hypres will receive up to $1.493 million over a period of 24 months to design, fabricate, and test a cryocooler and cryopackage that meets the requirements of JTRS Cluster 1.
The Hypres compact, tactical cryocooler will provide the cryogenic temperatures (4-5 degrees Kelvin) needed to support extremely high performance SME devices, such as those being developed by Hypres.
The cryopackage provides the thermal housing for the SME devices and the electrical and mechanical interfaces to the rest of the communication system.
"This is an exciting project for our Hypres team as it represents the start of the full scale development phase of our goal to provide the DoD with the first complete all-digital RF capability for JTRS," said Richard Hitt, Hypres General Manager.
"Upon completion of the crycooler/cryopackage project, and integration with our all-digital receivers and transceivers, Hypres will have provided the DoD with the most advanced, high performance family of direct-digitization communications products in the world."
For this contract, Hypres is tasked to build a cryocooler/cryopackage that meets specific DoD size, weight, durability, and capacity needs.
The Hypres prototype cryocooler/cyropackage will be designed to host up to a 10-channel all-digital transceiver, currently being developed by Hypres, and provide a plug-in upgrade of the current 4-channel JTRS Cluster 1 Radio.
"The cryocooler/cryopackage will have extended benefits for the DoD because it can be configured to support many JTRS configurations, including those in the newly established AMF Cluster," said Jack Rosa, Hypres CEO.
"This is another example of how our technology allows us to harness the power of digital processing directly in the RF domain--a major shift in the basic paradigm of wireless communications."