NASA IS INSTALLING THE COMMUNICATIONS, NAVIGATION, AND NETWORKING RECONFIGURABLE TESTBED (CONNECT) ONTO THE…

Public award description

NASA IS INSTALLING THE COMMUNICATIONS, NAVIGATION, AND NETWORKING RECONFIGURABLE TESTBED (CONNECT) ONTO THE TRUSS OF THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION TO DEMONSTRATE SOFTWARE-DEFINED RADIO (SDR) TECHNOLOGY, AND IS NOW ACCEPTING PROPOSALS FOR NEW AND USEFUL SDR EXPERIMENTS TO FLY ON CONNECT THAT ARE COMPLIANT WITH THE SPACE TELECOMMUNICATIONS RADIO SYSTEM (STRS) SDR STANDARD. EMERGENT SPACE TECHNOLOGIES PROPOSES TO DEVELOP AN STRS-COMPLIANT SOFTWARE-DEFINED GPS RECEIVER THAT CAN BE FLOWN ON CONNECT THAT IS BASED ON A PROVEN TERRESTRIAL COMMERCIAL TECHNOLOGY WHICH SHARES HERITAGE WITH THE JPL BLACKJACK RECEIVER. THE PROPOSED SYSTEM IS CALLED THE RADIO NAVIGATION WAVEFORM EXPERIMENT (RANE) AND UTILIZES A CODELESS SIGNAL PROCESSING TECHNIQUE, CALLED SPECTRAL COMPRESSION POSITIONING (SCP), TO ESTIMATE POSITION, NAVIGATION, AND TIMING (PNT) SOLUTIONS. RANE WILL HAVE A SMALL ELECTRONIC FOOTPRINT, BE MULTI-FREQUENCY CAPABLE, AND REQUIRE LESS POWER THAN TRADITIONAL CODE-CORRELATOR GPS RECEIVERS. ON CONNECT, RANE WILL DEMONSTRATE THE PORTABILITY AND USE OF SCP FOR PNT SOLUTIONS FOR NASA.