Research
JEM continues to expand it's expertise by working on a variety of high-level projects—some of which have been awarded by the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program from the federal government.

The SBIR program is a highly specialized form of funding for small firms (less than 500 employees) to perform cutting-edge R&D activities. These needs span the technology spectrum—from aviation and agriculture to medicine and manufacturing. SBIR is administered by 10 federal agencies (see below list) for the purpose of helping to provide early-stage R&D funding to small technology companies. Companies are invited to compete for funding by submitting proposals that answer the technical needs of the agency's solicitation.

Participating agencies include:

1. Air Force
2. Army
3. Chemical Biological Defense
4. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
5. Defense Threat Reduction Agency
6. Missile Defense Agency
7. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
8. Navy
9. Office of Secretary of Defense
10. Special Operations Command

JEM's Track Record
Most recently, JEM submitted four Phase I SBIR contracts and was awarded two, resulting in a 50% success rate. Also in 2005, JEM was awarded two Phase II SBIR contracts from NAVAIR and NASA. In 2003, JEM submitted eight SBIR contracts and was awarded three, which is a 38% success rate. See below for a snap shot of these projects:

Title:	Ballistic Radomes for SATCOM Antennas
Description:	Current radome designs are not capable of providing ballistic protection to antenna systems, which can lead to loss of communication for vehicles. This program will develop radomes that demonstrate both RF performance and ballistic protection capability for SATCOM applications.
Sponsor:	Department of the Army
Abstract Summary:	Radomes mounted on tactical combat vehicles such as the HMMWV, Stryker and On-The-Move Future Combat Systems (FCS) platforms must be designed to withstand ballistic impacts in the field. Proposed radome designs will incorporate materials with high levels of energy absorption under ballistic impact in constructions that meet the performance requirements, which are to minimize distortion of the antenna pattern at frequencies between 20 and 45.5 GHz while being as light as possible and providing sufficient ballistic protection.
Title:	Ultra Wideband Antenna Elements for Aircraft Applications
Description:	A novel, patented, anisotropic artificial dielectric technology is proposed to be applied to the problems of increasing antenna functionality and reducing coupling between antennas in arrays to improve antenna area utilization on Naval aircrafts.
Sponsor:	Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division
Abstract Summary:	The size and/or operating frequency of a wideband spiral antenna will be reduced by dielectric loading of the antenna. The goal is to achieve good gain and pattern performance from a reasonably small antenna, over a 100 MHz to 4 GHz band. The anisotropy of the artificial dielectric material offers extra degrees of freedom to suppress undesired higher order cavity modes that have been shown to drastically degrade performance when conventional dielectric loading is used. The same artificial dielectric technology will also be applied to the problem of reducing mutual coupling between elements in an array by using the material in an optimized superstrate, which will permit greater packing density for array elements.

National Average
The SBIR program is highly competitive, and in the first phase of the competition only 1 out of 7 or so proposals are selected for an award. So to win, a proposal must rank (on average) in the top 15 percentile of all proposals submitted (Source: Dr. Chris Busch of the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) in Idaho). Being awarded an SBIR contract gives small businesses an opportunity to become prime contractors for the U.S. government—increasing company exposure and profitability.

To learn more about the SBIR program click here.