ESA Open Invitation to Tender: 1-10627
Open Date: 13/09/2021 15:24 CEST
Closing Date: 29/11/2021 13:00 CEST

The objective of the activity is to develop and test an end-to-end system simulator that provides performance indicators which are key for the development of UAV satellite terminals. The simulator will support both command and control and payload data communication, GSO and NGSO constellations, a variety of UAVs and realistic terrain morphology. Targeted Improvements: Enabling key system tools for the development of UAV satellite terminals. Description:Evaluating the expected satellite communication link performance of UAVs in extreme situations such as low altitudes, high pitch and/or roll angles is particularly challenging and requires system modelling capabilities not available today. Consequently, this can lead to overdesign or under design of the satellite terminal compromising the communication link. This activity will advance UAV satellite terminal design by assessing the impact of such extreme flight conditions on the link and deriving accordingly the required terminal performance to ensure link availability and link performance in all flight phases. More specifically, this activity will consider the impact of a large variety of realistic terrain features (multipath, shadowing, blockage, etc.), UAV configurations, flight paths and flight manoeuvres. To achieve this, a system simulator will be developed, taking in particular into account governmental applications requirements. The simulator will be flexible and will allow simulating communication links in frequency bands from L- up to Q/V-band and with GSO satellites but also NGSO constellations. The simulator will be used to derive reference satellite terminal requirements that will be benchmarked against existing terminals. Testing will be carried out by assessing the performance of UAV command and control and payload data links for a number of manoeuvres and low-altitude flight paths. The link performance will be assessed as a minimum in terms of throughput, availability, latency and reliability for different flight phases of UAVs.

Directorate: Directorate Telecom Integrated Applica
Estabilishment: ESTEC
ECOS Required: No
Classified: No
Price Range: 200-500 KEURO
Authorised Contact Person: Adriana Lucas
Initiating Service: TIA-TI
IP Measure: N/A
Prog. Reference: E/0534-04A – 4S-Other Act. Prod&T
Tender Type: Open Competition
Open To Tenderers From: AT+BE+CH+CZ+DE+DK+EL+ES+FI+FR+GB+HU+IE+IT+LU+NL+NO+PL+PT+RO
Technology Keywords: 6-E-I-RF Modelling and Design Tools / 8-C-I-Design and Simulation