ESA Open Invitation to Tender AO10310
Open Date: 17/04/2020
Closing Date: 05/06/2020 13:00:00

Status: ISSUED
Reference Nr.: 20.154.03
Prog. Ref.: NAVISP Phase 1 E1
Budget Ref.: E/0365-10 – NAVISP Phase 1 E1
Special Prov.: BE+DK+DE+CH+GB+AT+NL+NO+FI+CZ+RO+FR+IT+GR+HU+SE
Tender Type: C
Price Range: 200-500 KEURO
Products: Ground Segment / Ground Station / F&T equipment / GPS Receivers / Ground Segment / Ground Station / F&T equipment / Time Generation and Synchronisation equipment
Technology Domains: RF Systems, Payloads and Technologies / Radio Navigation Systems/Subsystems / Ground Receivers
Establishment: ESTEC
Directorate: Directorate of Navigation
Department: Strategy and Programme Department
Division: NAVISP Programme Office
Contract Officer: Papaioannou, Maria
Industrial Policy Measure: N/A – Not apply
Last Update Date: 17/04/2020
Update Reason: Tender issue

Future applications and services are expected to increasingly rely on precise timing for their nominal operation. This includes operational scenarios in which GNSS signals are typically heavily degraded, like it is the case in urban and indoor conditions. A particular case of interest is indoor timing in small cells for future 5G, which have tight time synchronizations requirements (in the order of few tens of ns). In this context, research on direct timing and multi-antenna solutions has been started already, showing that achieving timing accuracies in the order of few tens of ns may be achievable, but requiring more complex signal processing techniques to be applied. This type of solutions, or similar ones relying on the previous concepts, are still to be assessed based on live GNSS signals in representative indoor scenarios. The objectives of the activity are: a) to exploit direct timing and spatial diversity (i.e., MIMO-GNSS processing) for achieving accurate timing solutions in indoor locations typical of small cells when considering low-cost receiver antennas; b) to design and implement, in a SW receiver, advanced direct timing and multi-antenna solutions; c) to design and implement a concept demonstrator relying on COTS and including the SW receiver mentioned above for the offline processingof the GNSS signals; d) to assess the timing accuracy achieved by the implemented solutions based on live GNSS signal received in representative conditions of indoor small cells; and e) to iteratively improve and refine the implemented solutions based on the indoor tests.