RF Engineer and Antenna Systems

THE MISSION

ITERRA is building the system of record for low-altitude airspace. 

Above 400 feet, every aircraft is tracked, logged, and attributable. Transponders, flight plans, radar, ATC. Below it, nothing. No transponder mandate an adversary obeys, no log, no attribution. Every headline ends the same way: nobody could say what was in that airspace.

A record-keeper cannot be a participant in the fight it is recording. That is why we are passive, and it is not a limitation, it is the product.

WHAT WE ARE BUILDING

Passive, edge-native RF and electro-optical sensing that autonomously detects and classifies Group 1-3 UAS without relying on pre-loaded signature libraries. Fused on the device. No active emissions. No cloud dependency. Purpose-built for denied, degraded, intermittent, and limited (DDIL) environments where legacy radar and library-dependent sensors fail.

WHO WE ARE

Small team. High trust. No bureaucracy. No tourists. Only builders.

Field-tested, integrated with the command-and-control systems our customers already run, SDVOSB certified, and manufacturing on U.S. soil in Hatillo, Puerto Rico.

WHAT YOU OWN

Everything the detection stack can hear is bounded by what the antenna captures, what the front end preserves, and what the SDR hands to the software as samples. You own that whole chain, from the electromagnetic model of the antenna to the demodulated symbol, and you own the measurements that prove the model was right. You report to the CTO.

• SDR signal characterization. Raw IQ from UAS control links and video downlinks, on USRP and bladeRF class hardware. Modulation, bandwidth, symbol rate, hopping pattern, framing. You build the GNU Radio and Python flowgraphs that capture, decimate, demodulate, and label. You tell the detection team what is actually in the air and you give them the reference signals to train against.
• Antenna and array modeling. Our antennas are designed in house. You model them before they exist: element design, impedance, pattern, gain, and polarization in HFSS, CST, FEKO, or openEMS. Direction-finding pairs and arrays: element spacing, mutual coupling, phase-center stability, and the bearing error each one produces. The simulation is your hypothesis; the VNA and the range are the test.
• RF front-end and link modeling. Link budgets from the airframe to the ADC. Noise figure, sensitivity, dynamic range, filter and LNA placement, intermodulation and blocker survival, cable and connector loss. Propagation over wooded, urban, and open terrain in Puerto Rico. You set the numbers the system is designed to.
• You build what you modeled and you measure it: RF PCB, printed and sheet-metal structures, phase-matched cabling. S11, return loss, bandwidth on the VNA. Gain and pattern in a chamber or by open-field comparison. Then you close the loop: where the measurement disagrees with the model, you find out why and you fix the model.