Metasurface-driven Electronic Warfare (eBook)

Rafael Goncalves Licursi de Mello (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024
644 Seiten
Wiley-IEEE Press (Verlag)
978-1-394-22668-9 (ISBN)

Infos

Understand the metasurface revolution in electronic warfare

Electronic warfare (EW) ensures safe usage of the electromagnetic spectrum by one's own forces while denying it to adversaries. Modern warfare is an extraordinarily fluid and dynamic activity, with numerous involved systems reconfigurable at the front or back ends. Metasurfaces, however, are artificially engineered surfaces that promise to take this dynamism to unprecedented levels by making platforms (aircraft, vessels, etc.) and the environment itself reconfigurable - a revolution that even major EW authorities have yet to fully comprehend.

Metasurface-driven Electronic Warfare outlines the parameters of this revolution and its transformative potential in the EW space. Beginning with a historical overview of EW dynamism, it then provides the electromagnetic basics to understand metasurfaces, their operation mechanisms, and capacity for shaping electromagnetic waves. A series of detailed studies of metasurface applications in EW makes this an indispensable guide to an increasingly dynamic battlefield.

Readers will also find:

• Clear cost-benefit analyses of metasurface substitutions in modern EW scenarios
• Detailed discussion of metasurface applications including stealth, electronic support, electronic attack, electronic protection, their use in drone swarms, smart environments, and more
• Simulations of EW scenarios with accompanying MATLAB codes and exercises

Metasurface-driven Electronic Warfare is ideal for EW analysts, specialists, and operators, as well as signals intelligence and electrical engineering researchers and students. Because it covers the essentials in both areas, the book is also appropriate to support graduate courses on metasurfaces or EW.

Rafael Gonçalves Licursi de Mello, PhD, received his PhD from the Institut Polytechnique de Paris in Electronics with a focus on reconfigurable metasurfaces for antennas. Experienced in both hardware and software parts of the EW problem, he has served as Signal Processing Engineer, Senior Signals Intelligence Researcher, Senior RF Antenna Research Engineer, and Vice-President of RF and Radar Systems at multiple deep tech companies. He began his career as a Pilot, Radar Operator, and Electronic Warfare Officer in the Maritime Patrol Aviation, where he carried out real EW missions and identified the needs for the scenario of the future.

Textauszug

1
Introduction to Metasurface‐Driven Electronic Warfare

Modern Electronic Warfare (EW) is a highly dynamic activity where many reconfigurable systems can optimize specific tasks on the fly. One may consider the EW problem as a huge scenario where systems exchange information by means of electromagnetic waves that interact with platforms and the environment they propagate through. Today, reconfigurability is essentially located at the extremity of the problem, that is, in software modules (the processing) and the hardware they control (mainly the antenna and RF front end), all depicted in Fig. 1.1.

Fig. 1.1 Modern EW: today, reconfigurability is located at the processing, RF‐front‐end, and antenna levels

This book describes how metasurfaces can add extra layers of dynamism to the core of the EW problem. By tailoring electromagnetic waves, metasurfaces can make platforms and even the environment itself reconfigurable. The reader does not need to master advanced concepts on electromagnetics, whose pertinent points we will concisely explain. However, we expect some familiarity with the radio and EW terminologies. As such, the reader will easily understand the possibilities and challenges related to the application of metasurfaces in EW. In some years, cities will deploy metasurfaces everywhere, and the ordinary person will get used to them. Unavoidably, defense applications will also exploit them extensively.

Metasurfaces are the convenient, two‐dimensional version of metamaterials, which in turn may receive the following, classical definition:

Metamaterials are man‐made materials with physical properties superior to natural materials. ‘Meta’ is a Greek prefix meaning ‘beyond’ or ‘a level above’, as in metaphysical or metalogical.

—André de Lustrac, Emeritus Professor at Université Paris Sud [1].

These artificially engineered surfaces are made of tiny unit cells that one can implement by etching, drilling, and deploying electronic components over dielectric laminates, rather like conventional printed circuit boards. The appropriate design of the unit cells provides an arbitrary electromagnetic response. Figure 1.2 exemplifies how a metasurface looks like by illustrating a structure for the absorption of waves at low frequencies [2]. Such metasurface is particularly interesting for stealth applications, and may present an ultra‐thin conformal shape, as shown in the upper inset.

Fig. 1.2 Example of metasurface absorber: the upper inset highlights the conformal shape, and the lower one is the unit cell.

“Reproduced from Khuyen et al. [2]/Springer Nature/CC BY 4.0.”

Although researchers have thoroughly studied metasurfaces in the last decades [3], to date few products have reached the market, and the maturity level of the technology is not among the highest. The main reason is that the arrival of metamaterials and metasurfaces divided researchers into spirited discussions about some physics fundamentals considered untouchable so far, such as the law of refraction [4, 5]. Indeed, we had to review this and other concepts [6].

Despite the initial controversies, today, academia acknowledges the exotic properties of metasurfaces. In a civilian context, the community regards today as the time when the technology will start to become popular and commercially successful [7, 8]. In particular, regulatory bodies recently elected metasurfaces as a central element for the physical layer of the next generation of mobile communications, the 6G [9]. In Defense, however, if many isolated papers are available in the open literature, the application of these academic ideas is still unclear for many.

Metasurface‐driven electronic warfare fills this gap, connecting the dots between metasurfaces and EW. The book aims at clarifying to students, engineers, researchers, and EW practitioners how metasurfaces work, what they can do, and how they would perform in EW problems. The book covers not only the so‐called metasurface‐based stealth technology, but also applications in Electronic Support (ES), Electronic Attack (EA), and Electronic Protection (EP). Moreover, it discusses the use of metasurfaces in radars.

Metasurfaces are promoting a true revolution in electromagnetics. The community have already envisioned them as a way of creating smart electromagnetic environments [10–14]. Of course, malicious applications are also showing up [15, 16]. In parallel, in the EW context, one‐on‐one combats are increasingly uncommon, with current trends reinforcing the idea of battle between EW networks [17–23]. Hence, this book also discusses the perspectives on the use of metasurface‐driven drone swarms.

Most of the applications studied here are immediate. However, some of them envision the near future because metasurfaces also have limitations that the community must address yet, depending on the application. Among them, they are inherently frequency‐dependent, and their electromagnetic response typically varies with the angle of incidence and polarization of waves. Besides, although metasurfaces can present low‐profile and conformal shape, some applications are extremely demanding in this matter. Thus, this book also makes an analysis of the challenges to solve before metasurfaces reach the theater of operation.

1.1 From Static Radios to a Metasurface‐Driven EW

Unlike metasurfaces, radio technology has already reached a remarkable maturity level, with quite elaborated products in the market for both civilian and military purposes. Nowadays, digital radios covering instantaneous bandwidths (BW) of 1.0 GHz and 16 bits of quantization levels no longer shock anyone. Flexible circuits enable fast agility in the tuning frequency, a wide control of gain and sampling rate, and even an onboard signal processing. The most interesting, everything ruled by software, allowing for the implementation of cognitive systems [24]. But in the past things were not like that. Figure 1.3 depicts the evolution of radio since its creation.

Fig. 1.3 Radio evolution from an EW perspective: (a) static radios and Morse codes; (b) tunable radios; (c) radars and EW; (d) software‐defined radio; (e) cognitive EW; (f) metasurface‐driven EW

1.1.1 Early Days

The first functional radios made use of static circuits. Their application was the exchange of Morse code pulses in commercial and diplomatic activities, as in Fig. 1.3a. They quickly attracted many amateurs who started intercepting whatever signals they could. As such, they had already laid the foundations for a wide, military activity of signals intelligence (SIGINT) by the beginning of the First World War which recruited many of these amateurs [25]. The First World War made clear the military significance of radio. While some Generals wanted to fight the traditional war, others did not leave the advantages of the new technology aside. The interception and location of radio signals are behind the unexpected outcomes of several battles that changed the course of that conflict [26].

When the Second World War (WWII) broke out, radios were much more elaborated. Continuous wave transmitters and crystal receivers allowed the exchange of amplitude‐modulated (AM) sound messages at frequencies tuned through a knob, as in Fig. 1.3b. The development of automatic gain controllers (AGC) added another degree of reconfigurability [27]. The arrival of the magnetron [28] allowed the use of higher frequencies, unlocking a series of technologies that made possible applications other than communications, like the radar, depicted in Fig. 1.3c.

Fig. 1.4 Cat‐and‐mouse EW game: (a) none of the countries use reconfigurability; (b) country B presents a longer dominance through time due to reconfigurability

By the time the first radars entered into service, it was clear that radio technology would shape the way humans make war. Many consider that moment as the birth of EW [29]. The beauty of such activity begins at the very first moment one decides to ensure to their forces the safe usage of the spectrum while denying it to adversaries, ultimately taking advantages in the process. To this end, researchers developed a series of systems to detect and counter radars. Further, they introduced a new branch of SIGINT, called Electronic Intelligent (ELINT), to build libraries to classify and identify radars through their signals [30]. As the spectrum became denser with many radar signals together, advanced pulse deinterleaving [31] and jamming techniques [32] became increasingly required. Consequently, a cat‐and‐mouse game where opponents had to adopt new systems and actions to counter one another was established. Fig. 1.4a depicts this dispute, still in place today. In the figure, Country A achieves dominance of the electromagnetic spectrum by deploying System A1 in the theater of operation. After a while, Country B reacts by releasing System B1, aiming at countering System A1 and taking dominance back. Country A must develop a new system to counter System B1. This cycle repeats in the cat‐and‐mouse EW game, and dominance passes from one country to another...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 10.12.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Physik / Astronomie
• Themenwelt: Technik ► Elektrotechnik / Energietechnik
• Schlagworte: active cancelation • electromagnetics • electromagnetic waves • electronic attack • electronic protection • electronic support • Electronic Warfare • MATLAB • metamaterials • metasurfaces • polarization conversion • radars • RCS reduction • reconfigurable intelligent surfaces • STEALTH
• ISBN-10: 1-394-22668-3 / 1394226683
• ISBN-13: 978-1-394-22668-9 / 9781394226689