Cooperative Agreement NNC14AA02A

THIS COOPERATIVE AGREEMENT BETWEEN NASA GRC AND HARRIS CORPORATION IS ADVANCING THE SOFTWARE DEFINED RADIOS (SDRS) FOR FUTURE SPACEFLIGHT COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS. ADVANCING THE TECHNOLOGY READINESS LEVEL (TRL) OF KA-BAND SDRS WITH HIGHER DATA RATE CAPABILITY AND NEW TECHNOLOGIES FOR MISSIONS REQUIRING A FLIGHT KA-BAND SDR IS A MAJOR EMPHASIS. THE GOAL IS TO MAKE A KA-BAND FLIGHT SDR AVAILABLE AS A USER TERMINAL FOR FUTURE NASA MISSIONS. BY IDENTIFY AND CONDUCTING TECHNOLOGY ADVANCEMENTS FOR NEW CAPABILITIES, FUTURE MISSIONS CAN LEVERAGE THESE ADVANCEMENTS. THE FOLLOWING CONCEPTS FOR NASA MISSIONS ARE ALL ITEMS FOR CONSIDERATION FOR ADVANCED SDR DEVELOPMENT: COGNITIVE RADIO AND NETWORKING , INTEGRATED OPTICAL AND RADIO FREQUENCY(RF) OPERATION, DATA SECURITY AND ENCRYPTION, COST AND RISK REDUCTION, OPERATION IN SPACE ENVIRONMENTS, SAFETY AND MISSION CRITICAL QUALIFICATION, OPERATION AS INTEGRATED PLATFORM WITH MULTIPLE FUNCTIONS (E.G., SCIENCE PROCESSING AND RADIO OPERATION), AND SHARING OF ON-BOARD COMPUTATIONAL RESOURCES AND INTEGRATION WITH THE AVIONICS AND SPACECRAFT BUSES. OPPORTUNITIES FOR A DEMONSTRATION OF THIS NEXT GENERATION SDR WILL BE PURSUED, AND A MAJOR GOAL OF THIS EFFORT IS TO PREPARE FOR A DEMONSTRATION FLIGHT. THE INITIAL COOPERATIVE AGREEMENT BETWEEN NASA GRC AND HARRIS RESULTED IN HARRIS PROVIDING BREADBOARD, ENGINEERING MODEL AND FLIGHT KA-BAND SDRS FOR THE PROJECT ORIGINALLY CALLED THE COMMUNICATION, NAVIGATION, AND NETWORKING RECONFIGURABLE TESTBED (CONNECT). CONNECT WAS LATER RENAMED THE SPACE COMMUNICATION AND NAVIGATION (SCAN) TESTBED. THIS EFFORT WILL CONTINUE TO SUPPORT THE ONGOING SCAN TESTBED OPERATIONS AND EXPERIMENTS RELATED TO THE HARRIS KA-BAND SDR. THE TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT EFFORTS AND POSSIBLE DEMONSTRATION WILL LEVERAGE THIS INITIAL EFFORT, AS WELL AS THE SUBSEQUENT DEVELOPMENTS BY BOTH NASA AND HARRIS. THE EFFORT WILL REVIEW LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NASA SCAN TESTBED (FORMERLY CALLED CONNECT) CURRENTLY ON THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION ALONG WITH OTHER RELEVANT EFFORTS AND QUANTIFY THE IMPACTS TO KEEP THE SPACE TELECOMMUNICATIONS RADIO SYSTEM (STRS) ARCHITECTURE FOR SOFTWARE-DEFINED RADIOS (SDRS) CURRENT AND UP TO DATE. STRS IS AN OPEN ARCHITECTURE FOR NASA SPACE AND GROUND RADIOS, AND PROVIDES A COMMON, CONSISTENT FRAMEWORK TO ABSTRACT THE APPLICATION SOFTWARE FROM THE RADIO PLATFORM HARDWARE TO REDUCE THE COST AND RISK OF USING COMPLEX RECONFIGURABLE AND REPROGRAMMABLE RADIO SYSTEMS ACROSS NASA MISSIONS.