High power keeps cool

Advanced US Department of Defense (DoD) surveillance sensors are continually pushing the need for ever-increasing electronics performance. Full-time, large-area ground surveillance capability, for instance, has been proven to be of great importance in recent conflicts; it drives the requirement for the signal processing of growing numbers of radar channels with increasing bandwidth. At the same time, the surveillance platforms carrying these sensors, typified by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or other small aircraft or spacecraft, are being pushed to be smaller, lighter, cheaper, and to have longer mission durations.