Epirus, a high-growth technology company developing breakthrough power management solutions, has been selected for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Massive Cross-Correlation (MAX) program. Epirus and the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) will collaborate on up to four project phases, worth a total of $5.3 million.
Epirus and UCLA will work to develop highly scalable analog circuit techniques, resulting in paradigm shifting levels of power efficiency and speed. This power efficiency will, in turn, enable a reduction in form factor that will allow embedding of high-speed correlators in a range of platforms and applications that cannot support the power requirements of current state-of-the-art devices. The project's technology outcomes will also enable passive sensing, new radar modes such as real-time synthetic aperture radar, imaging and jam-resistant radar and communications applications in a cutting-edge form factor with low size, weight and power requirements.
"We're pleased to deepen our partnership with DARPA as we begin our efforts to develop the world's best general purpose analog correlator to enable new capabilities for U.S. and allied militaries," said Ken Bedingfield, Chief Executive Officer, Epirus. "Today's announcement will spur new opportunities for our intelligent power management architecture that holds the potential to reshape power management as we know it."
In December 2021, DARPA awarded Epirus a multi-million-dollar contract as part of the WARDEN RANGER program to accelerate the advancement of Electromagnetic and Radio Frequency capabilities. The company is also under contract with DARPA's Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) to develop distributed processing of phased arrays with the goal of significantly reducing computational complexity and required processing rates in order to deal with large and flexible phased array antenna systems.
The company's collaboration with DARPA on these three projects will propel the continued research, development and maturation of Epirus' waveform optimization and power efficiency technologies for high-power microwave systems.
By gating energy at the sub-microsecond level, Epirus' intelligent power management platform optimizes performance to achieve significantly greater efficiency or higher power output, depending on the application area. In addition to powering Epirus' Leonidas suite of high-power microwave systems, the platform holds significant opportunities to transform a spectrum of sectors – from power and energy to communications and security – by limiting energy waste and protecting our world's most critical resource.