FA864924P0477

Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR) Phase II

Next Generation Cubesat High Bandwidth Communications

The goal of most operational spacecraft is to collect data (scientific, imagery, ELINT, etc.) and transmit that data to the appropriate users on the ground. The space to ground datalink, particularly for low cost Cubesats, is frequently the limiting factor in its design and ultimate operational utility. In fact, if space to ground downlink capacity could be significantly increased, there are numerous missions and applications that would benefit especially for earth observation missions where data size and timeliness of delivery to ground are of utmost importance. This SBIR submission is seeking to demonstrate an up to 50x improvement in Cubesat space to ground communication links on-orbit, for a low SWaP (Cubesat) form factor for military applications. One direct application for this technology (which Array Labs is pursuing) is extremely wide area, 3D Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). The high-bandwidth, low-cost communications systems proposed in this document will greatly increase data downlink, allowing the constellation to cover wider swaths of the surface of the earth (e.g. PACOM) with high resolution, 3-Dimensional RADAR imagery. This will have a significant impact on the DoD/IC mission, as this updated base map can be used to maintain custody of all adversarial military targets and can be used to tip and cue Low Density High Demand (LDHD) airborne and space-based assets. The 3D, wide area data will also greatly support the intelligence community by ensuring an up to date order of battle is maintained and high value adversary targets are always imaged, in high definition, at frequent intervals. Other applications for this capability include EO/IR or other earth observation satellites, which frequently have very large image collection capacities but are bottlenecked by their inability to quickly and cost-effectively downlink this imagery. The typical strategies for dealing with this are to compress the data, which results in loss of image quality, or potentially add expensive onboard processing on the spacecraft which adds cost and can t leverage the substantial amount of supplemental offboard information and compute capability that exists on the ground. Slow downloading of imagery also reduces the timeliness of the data, reducing operational utility. All of these problems can be improved by downloading more data to the ground faster - which is the focus of this SBIR.

The goal of phase II is to continue the R&D efforts initiated in Phase I. Funding is based on the results achieved in Phase I and the scientific and technical merit and commercial potential of the project proposed in Phase II.

AFX244-DPCSO1

F2D-11232

X24.4

Meghan Scott