SBIR Funds KCF Technologies to Enhance Tag, Track and Locate (TTL) Systems

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) funding was awarded to KCF technologies by Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) for improving their tools for finding and tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction before they were put to use.

DTRA is mainly involved in taking measures for countering WMDs by developing systems for Tag, Track and Locate (TTL). These TTL systems look out for signs of personnel and objects that are involved in producing, deploying and storing of WMDs. The funding from SBIR will prove useful in improving the utility of the systems and extending their lifetime.

The TTL systems are made up of sensors that are sensitive to WMDs or previous versions of WMDs and these sensors communicate the data about the location with the help of radio transmitters to the monitoring centers. The TTL systems that are currently in use exhaust most of their battery life for transmitting data. The life of these batteries could be extended by using energy harvested from the environment or by employing active power management. The energy harvesting methods could be via solar or mechanical vibration methods.

The first phase of SBIR funding will be spent on devising innovative energy harvesting methods that will support the TTL systems by focussing on enhancing its operational abilities and performance. This will be achieved by conducting analyses and design models that show improvement in the current energy harvesting methods. The second phase will be focussing on developing complete engineering solutions that incorporate model energy harvesting solutions. The final and the third phase will involve a low-rate production of the new technology that caters to the demands in military and commercial markets.