INNOVATIVE FRACTIONATED SATELLITE SYSTEM ENABLING HIGHER REUSE OF FREQUENCY (MATRIX) – EXPRO PLUS
23, March 2018

ESA Open Invitation to Tender AO9287
Open Date: 19/03/2018
Closing Date: 14/05/2018 13:00:00

Status: ISSUED
Reference Nr.: 18.197.02
Prog. Ref.: Preparation Element
Budget Ref.: E/0600-05 – Preparation Element
Special Prov.: BE+DK+FR+DE+IT+NL+ES+SE+CH+GB+IE+AT+NO+FI+PT+GR+LU+CZ+RO+PL+EE+HU+CA+SI
Tender Type: C
Price Range: 200-500 KEURO
Products: Satellites & Probes / RF / Microwave Communication (Platform and Payloads) / Antennas – BB / Other / Satellites & Probes / System Engineering Software / System Modelling & Simulation / Other
Techology Domains: Others
Establishment: ESTEC
Directorate: Directorate of Tech, Eng. & Quality
Department: System, Software & Technology Department
Division: Future Prep. & Strategic Studies Off.
Contract Officer: Casini, Gian Lorenzo
Industrial Policy Measure: N/A – Not apply
Last Update Date: 19/03/2018
Update Reason: Tender issue

The Satcom market is evolving with massive growth in bandwidth usage per consumer (fixed mobile) and thus huge market potential identified for High Throughput Satellite (HTS) systems. Focusing on GEO system, increased capacity is achieved with larger user Ka-band spectrum usage (up to 2.9 GHz) and aggressive frequency reuse in the coverage (massive multi-spot and frequency reuse) resulting in very large aggregated bandwidth with feeder link becoming the bottleneck.We are interested to explore the concept of separatingthe feeder link from the user link thus splitting the functions of a conventional Telecom satellite. The feeder spacecraft will be interconnected by standardized Inter-Satellite Links (ISL) using RF (or optical) technologies to the USER spacecraft.The main objectives of this activity are to provide a system definition and costing of a future Very High Throughput Satellite system with improved user broadband access utilising an optimised version of this new fractionated satellite system concept.In particular we are interested: to perform feasibility consolidation of the envisaged Broadband Satellite system architecture; to benchmark cost (CAPEX/OPEX) and performance versus current state-of-art systems or other alternative approaches; to assess benefits and interest in such a system implementation for the different actors in the value chain (Operators, system Integrators, technology providers and potential users); and ultimately to produce a gap analysis/roadmap outlining technology development from Industries from ESA Member States that will allow us to develop such a system.

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