About the Facility

APL’s Radio Science Laboratory (RSL) is the locus of development for quick turnaround design and construction of radio frequency (RF) projects in their proof-of-concept stage. The Lab offers agile support to activities that may yield major payoffs down the road. It offers hard-to-find components for the rapid construction of RF systems, assembly of data acquisition systems, and staging before field testing for surface-based measurements, whether from the ground, a ship, an unmanned aerial vehicle or a balloon. The RSL supports GPS experiments; high-frequency (HF), very-high-frequency (VHF) and ultra-high-frequency (UHF) field deployments; and system constructions for local testing using calibration and local terrain targets. The Lab also houses X-band Doppler systems as well as a wide range of band components and antennas.