Northrop Grumman reveals game-changing tech innovations at DARPA forum

Northrop Grumman, the Virginia-based defense contracting company, unveiled four new pieces of cutting-edge technology at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) “Wait, What?” forum on future technologies last week in St. Louis, Missouri.

Taking advantage of the company’s advanced research expertise, Northrop Grumman was keen to demonstrate some of the new technologies in microelectronics its labs are working on. 

One major headline-grabber was Terahertz (THz) Electronics, which Northrop Grumman has been developing as the world's fastest microchip. Terahertz electronics operate at a mind-boggling 1 trillion cycles per second and show promise for creating the world's highest frequency wireless link.

That wireless tech runs at 850 billion cycles per second, making THz communications capable of improving the   military’s communications abilities by moving it to a less congested electronic spectrum.

The company introduced a 100Gb/s combined data rate and spectral efficiency communications, which would also give a boost on secured communications for American warfighters. Also premiered was ICECool, which increases the output power of circuits used in high-power military radar, communications and electronic warfare transmitters by significantly cooling transistors.

Northrop Grumman also took the opportunity to show off DAHI, a new 3-D heterogeneous integration approach that enables the micron scale combination of virtually any microelectronics technology.

"Wait, What?" brought together select scientists, engineers and innovators to discuss emerging solutions to tomorrow's challenges.