Image Courtesy : www.iitr.ac.in

Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IIT Roorkee) and the Defence Electronics Application Laboratory (DEAL) Defence Research & Development Organization (DRDO) collaborated on joint research and development (R&D). The collaboration resulted in inventing indigenous radio frequency power amplifiers to fulfill the futuristic requirements of programmable radios being developed by DEAL, DRDO.

Professor Karun Rawat from IIT Roorkee led the research group. Pinaki Sen from DEAL, DRDO, led a group of scientists and engineers and designed the amplifiers to be simultaneously able to satisfy the high-efficiency requirements for thermal management and good linearity for signal fidelity.

The institute stated that the designs have been all together optimized for size, weight, and power (SWaP). These amplifier units have outstanding performance and overthrew many similar products from global manufacturers acquiring high efficiency and gain while simultaneously regarding good harmonic and intermodulation suppression. The shortage of indigenous components poses a challenge to R&D organizations, such as integrating the whole defense equipment in a given timeline from the armed forces. The scientific rigor of an academic R&D has a high prospect in order to develop unique and innovative designs to maintain leading-edge technology development.

IIT Roorkee additionally said that the challenge is to lead such scientific research to product-oriented exercises through cooperative efforts with R&D labs. They also added that the enhancement in efficiency would result in a considerable amount of head load deduction, which will encourage easy integration in the Programmable Radio chassis in the demanded form factor. The unit will be assembled with the indigenous radio units of DEAL and DRDO and will also be manufactured by private domestic partners for mass production.

Ajit K Chaturvedi, director of IIT Roorkee, commented that With Make in India coming to light as a powerful beacon to navigate the development of defense technologies, we need to synergize the potencies of the government research agencies, industries as well as academic associations to make India a truly global pro-player in major defense technologies and systems.

Lal Chand Mangal, director of DEAL DRDO, stated that DEAL DRDO, with its charter to do research, design, and development is geared up for the advancement of such futuristic technologies indigenously by calling for academia and industry in a big way to bolster Indian Defence System.

Professor Krun Rawat, from the department of electronics and communication, IIT Roorkee, said that keeping in tune with India's mission for technological upgradation, the existing R&D feat of Technology focus is a glimpse of the improvements to current capabilities and also bringing up new capacities.