ESA Open Invitation To Tender AO8883
Open Date: 27/03/2017
Closing Date: 12/06/2017 13:00:00

Status: ISSUED
Reference Nr.: 16.1TT.02
Prog. Ref.: ARTES 5 Sub-El. 5.1
Budget Ref.: E/0505-01B – ARTES 5 Sub-El. 5.1
Special Prov.: BE+DK+FR+DE+IT+NL+ES+SE+CH+GB+IE+AT+NO+FI+PT+GR+LU+CZ+RO+CA
Tender Type: C
Price Range: 200-500 KEURO
Products: Satellites & Probes / Other
Techology Domains: RF Systems, Payloads and Technologies / Telecommunication Systems/Subsystems / Telecom System Engineering Tools / RF Systems, Payloads and Technologies / Telecommunication Systems/Subsystems / Telecom Signal Processing / RF Systems, Payloads and Technologies / RF Payloads / Payload Tools / RF Systems, Payloads and Technologies / RF Technologies and Equipment / RF Modelling and Design Tools
Establishment: ECSAT
Directorate: Directorate Telecom & Integrated Applica
Department: Telecom Technologies,Product&Systems Dep
Division: Future Projects Division
Contract Officer: Dorval, Nathalie
Industrial Policy Measure: C1 – Activities in open competition limited to the non-Larg…
Last Update Date: 27/03/2017
Update Reason: Modified the Statement of Work (English version)

Objective:The objective of the activity is to demonstrate the potential of Carrier Aggregation (CA) technology for various satellite communications networks (MSS, FSS) operating in variousfrequency bands (C-, Ku, Ka- and Q/V-bands). Carrier aggregation needs to be addressed at different levels of the communication stack: Physical layer (e.g. multi-carrier transmit/receive, non-linear satellite channel, guard band setting); RF (e.g. antenna bandwidth, Max output power, spectrum emission mask, adjacent channel leakage ratio, spurious emissions); Payload (e.g. impact on the payload channel size and filling rate) and on-board receiver architecture; MAC (e.g. Resource allocation approach/flexibility, transponder traffic fillings, beam handover control, complexity of processing).Targeted Improvements:Increased practical peak data rates.Leverage all spectrum assets by allowing to fill unused gaps in transponders.Simplifies multi-band traffic management over non-contiguous spectrum allocations.Improves latency (and QoS in general) throughload balancing as the traffic can be accommodated by multiple smaller resource blocks instead of a single larger one.Enables interference management with intelligent allocations of resources as the assignment of multiple carriers to each user creates an additional axis in the resource allocation.Description:Carrier Aggregation (CA), that is the association of multiple carriers to/from a single user, is a key enabling technology in terrestrial radio communications networks (e.g. LTE) with thefirst CA chipset already available in the terrestrial market.As satellite spectrum is a finite resource and user expectations for interactive data services are becoming increasingly sophisticated, intelligent allocation of resources and the optimum useof transponders is mandatory. Carrieraggregation (CA) enables the optimal exploitation of spectrum resources and transponders and leads to higher peak and average datarates for userterminals (e.g. in hot spots).CA can be of high interest in scenarios where a single terminal can satisfy its aggregate leased capacity demand from multiple carriers occupying spectrum in different transponders. Thisapproach could minimize gaps in the satellite transponders that cannot be utilized for other services. It can also lead to a substantial increase in the delivereddata rate, up to levels notpossible when only a single carrier is employed.The benefits of CA come at the cost of complexity in the satellite terminal (at various levels) that need to be traded-off. For example, the proposed study shall identify and analyse whichelements of the transmit and receive chain (e.g. tuner, SSPA) need to be augmented, as well as identify what processing is required at the physical and MAC layer. Additionally, the layerof re-combining data from multiple carriers (e.g. at GSE level) shall alsobe an area of study.The activity shall:Define the operational scenarios, system architectures, type of terminals, and physical layer techniques that are more relevant to CA.Assess the impact on the user terminal and on-board receiver architecture.Develop the Carrier Aggregation Demonstrator carrying out emulations of carrier aggregation at the physical, RF and MAC layer over multiple loadedsatellite transponders.Test the Carrier Aggregation Demonstrator and obtain relevant performance metrics.Procurement 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”.Procurement 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”.

If you wish to access the documents related to the Invitation to Tender, you have to log in to the ESA Portal.