ARLINGTON, Va., 30 Dec. 2009. Officials of the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR) in Arlington, Va., are awarding a $7.1 million contract to The DRS Technologies C3 Systems segment in Gaithserburg, Md., for the Navy's Common Signal Processor (CSP) technology demonstrator for radar signal processing.

The Common Signal Processor is general-purpose open-architecture digital signal processor (DSP) for the Navy's C-Band Active Array Radar program, as well as for other radar systems that are deployed or in development.

Among the chief aims of the Common Signal Processor is to enhance the Navy's AN/SPY-1 Aegis radar system with additional advanced anti-air warfare and theater ballistic missile defense capabilities. It will add adaptive digital signal processing to help the Aegis radar reject low-altitude clutter and improve the system's electronic counter-countermeasures (ECCM) capabilities.

Active phased array radars do not use mechanical radar beam scanning, and have a distributed transmit power source rather than a centralized high-power transmitter. DRS will do the work in Gaithersburg, Md., and should be finished in September 2011.

For more information contact the Office of Naval Research online at www.onr.navy.mil or DRS C3 Systems at www.drs.com.