ESA Open Invitation to Tender AO9488
Open Date: 18/07/2018
Closing Date: 12/09/2018 13:00:00
Status: ISSUED
Reference Nr.: 18.1ET.11
Prog. Ref.: Technology Developme
Budget Ref.: E/0901-01 – Technology Developme
Special Prov.: BE+DK+FR+DE+IT+NL+ES+SE+CH+GB+IE+AT+NO+FI+PT+GR+LU+CZ+RO+PL+EE+HU
Tender Type: C
Price Range: 200-500 KEURO
Products: Ground Segment / Ground Station / Antennas / Structure & Thermal, Servo / Mechanics, Reflectors, feeds and diplexers, Antenna Control Units (ACUs), Drive Systems, … / Ground Segment / Ground Station / RF equipment / Transmitter and Receiver assemblies, Frequency converters, …/ Ground Segment / Ground Station / Baseband equipment / Telemetry and Telecommand equipment, Tracking, Ranging and Doppler measurement equipment, CODECS, …
Techology Domains: RF Systems, Payloads and Technologies / Telecommunication Systems/Subsystems / Telecom Signal Processing / Electromagnetic Technologies and Techniques / Antennas / Millimetre-Wave and Sub-Millimetre-Wave Antenna Front-Ends
Establishment: ESTEC
Directorate: Directorate of Tech, Eng. & Quality
Department: Electrical Engineering Department
Division: Radio Frequency Systems & Payloads Offic
Contract Officer: Erkelens-Sickinger, Franziska
Industrial Policy Measure: C1 – Activities in open competition limited to the non-Larg…
Last Update Date: 18/07/2018
Update Reason: Tender issue
The need for miniaturization of Satellite IoT terminals, in terms of size, weight and consumed power, is well recognized as a key enabler for the adoption of satellite IoT solutions. There are on-going or planned design and development activities targeting power and energy efficient access protocols for direct satellite access of IoT terminals (in the excess of 10000 units). Such techniques may allow reducing the required transmit power and maintaining an efficient use of amplifiers operating close at saturation. Despite such development, there are still pressing needs to devise innovative architectures for IoT terminals that allow more efficient integration of the antenna, RF front end and basedband unit to significantly reduce the cost of terminal. The antenna is considered to be an enabling element in this chain to achieve the compactness and performance required.The target is to drastically reduce the recurring cost by a factor 10 and size of the IoT terminals, which could be achieved for example by employing novel antenna architectures and simplifying the design, by reducing the number of components while keeping the performance.The novel antenna design shall comply with the antenna needs for such terminals, i.e. low cost, low profile and possibly multi-frequency operation.For IoT applications low maintenance is an important aspect. Often these terminals are in remote locations; hence antennas without moving parts are preferred. Other available technologies like Advanced Solar Antenna (ASOLANT), integrating the antenna with the solar panel, could beof interest to provide autonomous power supply.While emphasizing on Ku/Ka-band services of GEO satellites, the applicability of theproposed integrated solution to other frequency bands (such as UHF) and LEO satellites shall also be investigated.The activity consists of the following tasks: Define the operational scenarios, architectures, applicable techniques to antenna, RF front-end forsatellite IoT terminals Design and develop prototype (breadboard) integrated antenna and RF front end solutions to achieve target figures of merit of the overall satellite IoT terminal Carry out tests to characterize the relevant performance metricsProcurement Policy: C(1) = Activity restricted to non-prime contractors (incl. SMEs). For additional information please go to EMITS news “Industrial Policy measures for non-primes, SMEs and RD entities in ESA programmes”.
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