Revolutionary Model-Based Design transforms our Engineering

Building the expertise to fulfil this vision took patience, but the strategy, which began in 2017, is paying off. Raytheon UK has been awarded a multimillion pound production contract for its PhantomStrikeTM Radar System Power Conditioning unit (PCU), developed using model-based design. Compatible with a wide range of platforms – including light-attack aircraft, rotary-wing aircraft, uncrewed aerial vehicles, and ground-based towers – this first-of-its-kind, compact Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar is smaller, lighter, quieter and requires less power. 

“Eight years ago, we began to consider the type of power supply customers might require in the next three-to five years and decided on investing R&D into a small, flexible AC to DC Power Converter, particularly for military and civilian radar,” said MacLean, an RTX-certified architect.

“Military and civilian aircraft electronic systems derive power from turbines that produce an AC, or a three-phase, effect. However, customers will always need to convert AC to DC power because that’s what a lot of their systems run on. To do that in an aircraft is a challenge because any technology placed in an aircraft needs to take up very little space and weight,” said MacLean.

Raytheon UK’s PhantomStrikeTM radar system Power Conditioning Unit

Model-based design would allow the company to de-risk its investment.

MacLean brought the University of Strathclyde onboard in 2017 to help evaluate these new tools and methods of design with the objective of delivering a physical model. By 2020, the team had succeeded in creating an Active Rectifier Technology Demonstrator in Raytheon UK’s Glenrothes lab that would form the basis of future three-phase AC-DC Power supplies up to and beyond 12kW, including the PhantomStrike programme.

Raytheon UK’s core Active Rectifier technology is a device that uses actively controlled switches, rather than passive diodes, to control the currents in a system. The greater control means that greater efficiencies can be achieved as well as reducing the size of the system overall. 

Specifically designed for PhantomStrike using Raytheon UK’s core Active Rectifier technology, the function of the PCU is to form the primary power conversion interface between the aircraft primary power system (AC power from the engine-powered generators) to supply regulated, conditioned DC power to the PhantomStrike AESA Radar Unit and the PhantomStrike Compact High-reliability Integrated Receiver/exciter Processor Unit.

“The PCU has been tested under a wide range of simulated conditions that would conventionally take significant effort to perfect with physical bench-testing,” said Dr. Puran Rakhra, principal systems engineer who co-led the PhantomStrike PCU programme along with Dave Gordon, chief engineer and engineering fellow.

Rakhra was formerly the research associate at Strathclyde University working on the active rectifier topology and was recruited into Raytheon UK’s engineering team.

“De-risking our PCU model within a digital twin, model-based environment was key to its success. The model also formed a platform by which we could better execute further refinements to the PCU requirements associated with functionality, signalling and timing that brought benefits at the PhantomStrike integrated system-level with the CHIRP and radar units.”

The resulting radar weighs less than 150 pounds – nearly half the weight of more traditional radar systems – and delivers the advanced performance needed for superior battlespace situational awareness.