Man Portable Starlink System

SI2 Technologies, Inc. (SI2) proposes to develop a lightweight, battery powered, packable, foldable Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) Starlink terminal that will allow the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) to connect to Starlink satellites providing at least 1Mbps data rates and will be easy to align via onboard GPS and compass with azimuth and elevation beam steering. SI2 will leverage its previously developed OpenVPX Chassis Design housing VITA 48 hardware and Sidekiq software defined radio (SDR) electronics to generate RF signals and data to and from the antenna. An additional benefit of SI2’s design is that the mechanical fixturing of the array will be hinged for opening and closing of the array, increasing the aperture size to a 10x8 inch 192 element arrays when deployed while folding up into a lightweight, packable 5x8 inch form. SI2 will improve antenna element gain by exploring the use of lenses and/or dual parasitic patches while reducing the RF losses by selecting state of the art materials. Front-end electronics and beamformer technology will use commercial, off the shelf (COTS) GaN and GaAs devices to reduce losses, noise figure, reduce power consumption to enable battery powered operation, and render the system affordable. The proposed effort leverages current work developing CMOSS Antenna Distribution System for SOCOM, previous work on Radiohead devices for the Army, and secure, open standard architecture, multi-function airborne RF sensors for the Air Force. SI2 will design and develop an extremely lightweight Starlink terminal solution using low loss RF substrate materials and COTS low power low loss electronics to enable battery operation and affordable cost. SI2 will develop appropriate connector interfaces and methodology for deployment and alignment to Starlink constellations in the field.