Under the radar With funding from the Pentagon, Raytheon engineers are testing new technology that could give the company a huge leap on its rivals
By Robert Weisman, Globe Staff | April 25, 2005 ANDOVER -- In the race to develop the military radar of the future, engineers at Raytheon Co. are betting that their pursuit of new technologies will give them an advantage over radar-making rivals. And the hottest technology in the radar field today may be the gallium nitride semiconductors now being tested in clean rooms at a Raytheon foundry here, under a research project underwritten by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The agency, known as Darpa, is the research arm of the Pentagon, and it's been working since 2002 to bring gallium nitride research out of universities and into the laboratories of its military contractors. Last month, Darpa awarded Raytheon a three-year, $26.9 million gallium nitride contract with a potential value of $59.4 million if follow-on options are exercised. "This is the leap ahead in technology, the building blocks for the next generation of radar," said Mark E. Russell, vice president of engineering for Raytheon's Integrated Defense Systems division. Raytheon researchers think they can get 10 times as much power out of semiconductors designed with gallium nitride, or GaN, as they do from their current semiconductors based on gallium arsenide materials. The semiconductors powering radar, also known as RF transistors, operate on much higher microwave frequencies than the silicon-based semiconductors used in personal computers. The advances anticipated from gallium nitride properties could enable the military operators of future Raytheon radar systems to track a target 78 percent farther in range with the same accuracy or, for a different mission, reduce the radar antennae size by half while more than doubling the area radar operators can search. If all goes according to schedule, the first radar prototypes using gallium nitride semiconductors could be deployed by the end of the decade. Gallium nitride, which is used in the light-emitting diodes in cellphones and other hand-held devices, is also likely to have significant commercial applications in the field of wireless communications. Working with Raytheon on the Darpa project is Cree Inc., a Durham, N.C., company that grows the wafer substrates used for the gallium nitride semiconductors Raytheon is testing. Raytheon and Cree engineers are shuttling back and forth between their research sites in Andover and Durham in an effort to meet Darpa deadlines and outstrip Darpa-funded gallium nitride research efforts by two other teams that include a pair of Raytheon radar competitors, Northrop Grumman Corp. and Lockheed Martin Corp. While those efforts have different focuses, and are on different tracks, there is still a sense of competition. "We certainly feel we're in the lead," said John W. Palmour, cofounder and executive vice president of the advanced devices division at Cree. "We're going to be able to move very fast. Raytheon wants to get gallium nitride inserted in radar very quickly and we want to get it inserted in the base stations of cell towers very quickly." But the partners still have to overcome a number of technical challenges to improve the reliability of the materials and guarantee the availability of high-quality substrates for gallium nitride semiconductors. Darpa's research chiefs have identified gallium nitride as a critical material for future military applications not only in radar, but also in air-to-ground, air-to-satellite, and ground-to-ground communications systems, said Mark J. Rosker, program manager in Darpa's microsystems technology office in Arlington, Va. The technology is also useful in electronic warfare that involves protecting signals and jamming enemy signals, Rosker added. "It's an extremely important technology, and Darpa has recognized that," Rosker said. "It's not every day that you develop a new semiconductor material with this kind of capability. The implications of increasing power by this order of magnitude would be very dramatic." While academic research in the field has been underway for more than a decade, the ability to add nitrogen to gallium and get a robust material for semiconductors has emerged only in the past five years, Rosker said. Phase one of the Darpa program began in 2002 with a series of grants to research materials. That was followed this spring by a round of phase two and phase three grants to Raytheon and Cree, and the other teams. The new research focuses more heavily on gallium nitride applications, such as devices and integrated circuits. Researchers working on the Raytheon program, called Wide Bandgap Semiconductors for Radio Frequency, are cutting up wafers and putting the pieces into thousands of modules assembled in large phased arrays in the most high-tech radar systems. In addition to its investment in the Andover foundry, which now produces gallium arsenide semiconductors, Raytheon has spent tens of millions of dollars to match its Darpa funding in a bid to build more powerful radar systems at lower costs. If Raytheon can capitalize on the technology before its rivals do, it can use it as a "discriminator" in Pentagon competitions, Russell said. Among defense contractors, Raytheon has sought to be a leader in research and development, said Paul Nisbet, aerospace analyst for JSA Research Inc. in Newport, R.I. "I think they've put more into it and gotten more out of it than other companies," Nisbet said. But he said Raytheon has been less successful in exploiting the commercial applications of its military-related research and development projects. At the Lockheed Martin Radar Systems division in Syracuse, N.Y., researchers are teamed with TriQuint Semiconductor Inc. of Hillsboro, Ore., and BAE Systems of Nashua, N.H., to research gallium nitride semiconductor power amplifiers in radar as well as missile seeker electronics packages. "It's a discriminator for Raytheon if they can get there first, but that's why we're working hard on it," said Doug Reep, vice president for technical operations at the Lockheed Martin radar unit. Northrop Grumman engineers, meanwhile, are researching higher frequencies for gallium nitride semiconductors at a fabrication plant in Manhattan Beach, Calif., and an electronics site in Baltimore. "The aim of Darpa is to see how quickly we can make this technology reliable and high-performing," said Rosker. Robert Weisman can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] � Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2005/04/25/under_the_radar ------------------------ Yahoo! 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