Cobham developed a new family of GaN solid state transmitters 42705162

Defence & Security News - Cobham
 
Cobham developed a new family of GaN solid state transmitters
Cobham has developed a new family of Gallium-Nitride (GaN) solid state transmitters, called SOLSTx. Pronounced as “solstice”, they are optimised for ground, maritime and airborne use, such as air traffic control, weather, telemetry, fire control and long range surveillance radars.
     
Cobham developed a new family of GaN solid state radars
Cobham's SOLSTx is a family of affordable and reliable Gallium-Nitride Solid State Transmitter solutions (Photo: Cobham)
     

The advantages of the GaN Solid State technology, compared to traditional ones, are the mean time between critical failure, the lower operational and sustainment costs, and the lower out of band emission, which reduces interference with nearby radars and communication systems.

In addition, Cobham’s design approach provides gradual degradation of the hardware, over time, instead of instantaneous shutdown as in the Vacuum Electronics Devices, such Magnetrons, Klystrons, Travelling Wave Tubes and Crossed-Field Amplifiers, that are currently used in many designs.

Finally, Cobham’s proven system power of 175kW in S-band, offers increased efficiency through reduced size, weight and power.

Cobham Advanced Electronic Solutions’ Senior VP of Business Development and Technology, Jeff Hassannia, mentioned that “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. 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."