DARPA's M3IC program aims to research magnetic components to create radar systems
NewsJune 17, 2016
ARLINGTON, Va. The Magnetic, Miniaturized, and Monolithically Integrated Components (M3IC), a new Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program, will research miniaturized magnetic components with the goal to catalyze chip-based innovations in radar and other radio frequency (RF) systems.
DARPA researchers think that integrating electronic components, such as transistors and capacitors, with magnetic components, like circulators and isolators, will open a pathway to a more capable electromagnetic system.
Dev Palmer, program manager for M3IC - pronounced "M-Cubic" - says, “Magnetic materials let us access unique physics and functionality that we cannot duplicate with electronic components. M3IC could change the way we design RF circuits and systems." The program is will span over the next five years and currently has a total of $26 million in funding.
Signal processing functions are achieved more effectively by manipulating magnetic fields. However, miniaturizing and integrating magnetic components on chips have proven difficult for engineers. Magnetic fields that accompany these components can interfere with electronic behavior on chips in unpredictable ways. Therefore engineers segragate the magnetic functions they need off-chip making the systems bulkier, heavier, and needing more power.
“M3IC is about distributing the magnetic functionality throughout the circuit instead of pushing it out to the edges,” Palmer says. “It’s about designing and fabricating circuits holistically, so the designer can supercharge state-of-the-art RF electronic circuits with magnetic functionality wherever it is needed, and only where it is needed, in one monolithic chip.”
Seamless co-design and integration of magnetic materials and semiconductors should lead to new generations of more compact microwave monolithically integrated circuits (MMICs), Palmer continues, a class of chips for RF technology developers that offer wider frequency ranges, better stability, and lower power needs.
Engineers will need to address three challenges in the M3IC program:
Challenge #1: The first challenge will be to develop techniques for growing and patterning near-perfect films of magnetic materials on semiconductor wafers, and at the same time preserving the properties of both the magnetic materials and the semiconductor microcircuitry.
Challenge #2: Engineers will develop the field- and circuit-modeling software necessary for an accurate and efficient design of integrated magnetic devices.
Challenge #3: Lastly, engineers will use the new materials and modeling tools to devise and deliver new and improved electromagnetic functionality in smaller, power-efficient packages.
Once engineers address these challenges, the program can provide the tools to provide the design and performance of magnetic components, such as circulators and frequency selective limiters (FSL). “These limiters, or FSLs, filter out signals that are intentionally or unintentionally trying to jam your reception or damage your receiver,” Palmer explains. “But unlike current receiver protection systems, which work by means of complex sense-analyze-and-actuate loops, FSLs achieve that goal in a much simpler way, as a natural result of their magnetic physics. The ability to produce and integrate miniaturized, power-efficient, interference-management directly onto the billions of RF-involved chips of the future could become a real game changer.”
By integrating the expected advances of the M3IC program into chips endowed with the specialized semiconducting material gallium nitride (GaN), the program also could help provide the military services with expansive higher-frequency refuge from the overcrowded microwave portion of the spectrum.
By opening the way for a new magneto-electronic design, the M3IC program could also lead to miniaturized radar systems, higher-capacity channels for transferring data and information, and higher-power RF systems, which could translate into such capabilities as jam-resistance, farther-reaching communications, and more powerful electronic warfare systems.
“By adding magnetics to the MMIC designer’s palette, we hope to open up a whole new design spectrum for RF systems,” Palmer states.
