TETHERS UNLIMITED, INC. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase II: A12-067
TETHERS UNLIMITED, INC. — SBIR Phase II award from Department of Defense.
- Amount
- $1,471,823
- Agency
- Department of Defense · Army
- Program / Phase
- SBIR · Phase II
- Topic
- A12-067
- Solicitation
- 2012.1
- NAICS
- —
- Place of performance
- WA
- Period
- 2016-05-26 → 2017-05-25
Description
To better meet the needs of soldiers, the Army seeks to provide over-the-horizon tactical satellite communications using a soldiers standard issue radio at UHF or mobile SATCOM terminals at K-band. Traditional relay satellites in geosynchronous orbits are unable to meet this need because they are too distant from the smaller terminals relatively weak transmitter and low gain antenna. A cluster of small relay satellites deployed in low-earth orbit could conceivably meet this need with the added benefit of responsiveness. Leveraging a decade of experience developing high performance RF communications solutions for small satellites, TUI proposes to augment its proven SWIFT software-defined radio platform with broadband K- and Ka-band transceiver modules. Coupled with TUIs existing gimbal technology for pointing high-gain apertures, a small satellite in LEO will be able to provide data services in excess of 100 Mbps to mobile terminals such as those deployed for the WIN-T program.