Washington Business Journal:
Raytheon’s Army Navy/Transportable Radar Surveillance (AN/TPY-2) is the latest in a long line of company radar systems getting the so-called “Gallium Nitride” makeover.
At a briefing with reporters Thursday, Jim Bedingfield, director of Missile Defense & Space Programs at the Waltham, Massachusetts-based Raytheon Co. (NYSE: RTN), said that the company won a contract with the U.S. Missile Defense Agency that would support its Andover, Massachusetts foundry shift from making AN/TPY-2 with Gallium Arsenide chips to GaN circuits.
So, what does this all mean?
AN/TPY-2 is a mobile X-band radar, meaning it emits a more narrow, focused electromagnetic pulse for a clearer and more precise picture of the threat.
“You have very populated and increasingly complex threat scenes — in order to sort through that, you need to be able to see it in the band,” Bedingfield said. The AN/TPY-2 “allows you to understand in the scene what is the difference between a threat and a non-threat.”
Currently, the 14 Raytheon-built AN/TPY-2s deployed around the world use monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) built out of Gallium Arsenide. MMICs amplify and radiate low wattage signals sent through the radar’s signal generators and send the radar beam through the antenna.
GaN is better able to withstand a more powerful transmit signal than Gallium Arsenide without degrading. This affords GaN-equipped AN/TPY-2 five times the search volume, increases range by 50 percent, and further increases its ability to discriminate threats and paint a clearer picture of what those threats are.
The announcement that AN/TPY-2 was going to get this upgrade follows similar announcements for other radars in the Raytheon product line. In March 2016, Raytheon rolled out its first Patriot radar system using GaN technology. The company also plans to outfit them to its Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR), its Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar (EASR) and the radar for the next-generation jammer…
