QA_Announcement_Part_2.pdf

BROAD AGENCY ANNOUNCEMENT

BAA-RVKV-2013-0005

Questions and Answers

Question Government Response

12. Re: Proposal Submission/Delivery -- Is FedEx Overnight an acceptable method for delivering the proposal to AFRL

FedEx is an acceptable method for delivering the proposal(s). Other acceptable methods for delivery include common carriers such as United State Postal Services, United Parcel Service, Airborne Express, and DHL.

13. Re: Electronic Copies -- Is it acceptable to deliver electronic copies of the Model Contract, Reps & Certs, Use of Non- Government Advisors form and other non- Excel Cost/Business documents in PDF?

PDF is an acceptable electronic format to submit the Model Contract, Reps & Certs, and Use of Non- Government Advisors forms.

14. Re: Proposal Binding --What is the Government’s preference for binding of paper copies

The Government does not have a preference for binding of paper copies; nor does the Government desire or invite elaborate of excessive proposals.

15. Re: Separate Electronics Files -- Is it the Government’s intention that the C-SOW be a separate electronic Microsoft Word file (on the same CD as all other files)

As per the BAA Section IV, Paragraph 2(d) the C- SOW must be a separate and distinct part of the proposal, but not necessarily a separate Microsoft Word document.

16. Re: Program Security Classification -- Section F of the BAA states that the facility has to have a full secret clearance, if the facility does not have any clearances, is a proposal submission precluded?

As stated in the BAA Section I, Paragraph F.

“…The Offeror must possess, or acquire prior to award of a contract, a facility clearance equal to….” As such it does not appear a proposal submission is precluded.

17. Re: Program Design Criteria and Assumptions -- Does the BAA response need to address only the RF amplifier (e.g., within the dashed blue line in BAA Figure 1) or, in addition, address the Power Conditioning/Distribution (e.g., green box in BAA Figure 1) and Control/Monitor functions (e.g., red box in BAA Figure 1), too?

If the proposed RF amplifier performance is significantly impacted by the Power Conditioning/Distribution and/or the Control/Monitor functions and/or these functions are envisioned to differ significantly from the current GPS RF amplifier implementation, they should be addressed in the offeror’s proposal. In all cases however, the emphasis should be on the RF amplifier itself.

18. Re: Program Design Criteria and Assumptions

-- As stated on BAA page 2, “The focus of the effort will be the radio frequency section as shown in Figure 1. The term power amplifier (PA) will be used to refer to this module only.” Referring to the previous question (17.), if the focus is only to concentrate on the RF section indicated in blue, will the Power Conditioning/Distribution and Control/Monitor functions be provided by the Government or will the offeror be required to supply equipment (e.g., special test equipment) to support these functions as part of the hardware delivery?

With respect to delivery of the Engineering Design Unit (EDU), the Government will provide “standard” Power Conditioning/Distribution and Control/Monitor functions similar to the existing GPS RF amplifier implementation. If the offeror design performance is critically dependent upon a unique implementation of these functions and requires the offeror to provide special test equipment to produce the performance goals needed from the RF amplifier, then the special test equipment must be provided to the Government as a part of the EDU delivery.

19. Re: Program Design Criteria and Assumptions -- As stated in the BAA on page 2 (“For the purposes of this BAA, available spacecraft bus voltages to the navigation payload should be considered in the range from 28 VDC to 100 VDC.”), if the Power Conditioning/Distribution is not required for the RF Power Amplifier hardware delivery, must the RF Power Amplifier operate over the entire spacecraft bus DC voltage range from 28VDC to 100VDC?

No. The impacts of any voltage conversion and conditioning from the standard GPS spacecraft bus voltage should be discussed in the offeror proposal with respect to the overall RF amplifier performance goals, but the offeror is free to choose the specific voltage(s) required to operate the proposed design.

AFRL will be able to provide appropriate input voltages for operation of the EDU upon delivery.

20. Re: Program Design Criteria and Assumptions -- Does “Input RF Power” (e.g., “RF in”) include CW or all GPS modulated signals (e.g., L1C/A, L1Cd/L1Cp, L1P(Y), L1M, L2CM/L2CL, L2P(Y), L2M, and L5I/Q)? Will these signals be provided by AFRL as input to the amplifier or must the offeror generate/provide the necessary equipment to generate the signals to test the amplifier?

The “Input RF Power” refers to all the GPS modulated signals associated with the L1-band RF amplifier (not L2 or L5). AFRL does not anticipate providing any GFE with respect to GPS signal generation, so the offeror should anticipate the necessity of providing the equipment necessary to generate the GPS test signals.

21. Re: Program Design Criteria and Assumptions -- Referring to BAA Figure 1 and BAA Table 1, is the RF Power Amplifier required to process any of the three GPS L-band signals (e.g., “L1, L2, or L5”) individually? In other words, must the single RF Power Amplifier be capable of amplifying all three signals and that the resultant output is a combined output of all three frequencies (e.g., requiring the utilization of a Triplexer)?

The offeror proposal should only address the requirements for the L1-band RF amplifier (the most stressing design). It is anticipated that L2-band and L5-band amplifiers would be based upon a successful demonstration of the L1-band amplifier design, but L2-band and L5-band signals are not a part of this acquisition.

22. Re: Program Design Criteria and Assumptions

-- Referring to the previous question (21.), if a Triplexer is required for the +/-50MHz BW, please bear in mind that since L2 and L5 center frequencies are 51.15 MHz apart, the L5 upper 3dB cutoff and L2 lower 3dB cutoff will overlap. Are there additional spurious and harmonic rejection requirements outside the three GPS frequency bands?

A Triplexer is not required as a part of this acquisition. See question #21.

23. Re: Threshold and Objective -- Will the Threshold and Objective RF output power levels include non-simultaneous GPS modulated signals or CW signals?

The Threshold and Objective RF output power levels will include all signals and waveforms that the GPS spacecraft generates on the L1-band.

24. Re: Threshold and Objective -- Based on the threshold and objective requirements for “Life,” what are the failure rates required to achieve a Life of 5 years and 15 years? Are there any additional assumptions for the 5 and 15 year “Life” expectancy?

The offeror should recognize we are not looking for “production” or fully flight-qualified hardware to be developed and delivered as a part of this acquisition, but a “TRL 5+” flight qualifiable design. Therefore we do not anticipate Class-S parts to be used in the EDU design. However, all components should be traceable to fully flight qualified hardware and any differences in performance should be discussed and documented. One aspect of this traceability is “Life.” The components utilized in the EDU design should be traceable to components capable of operation for the specified lifetimes with acceptable failure rates when exposed to the environments experienced by the GPS spacecraft in its operational orbit.

25. Re: Hardware Delivery -- For the RF Power Amplifier hardware delivery, must the offeror supply all necessary test equipment for the hardware delivery? For example, will the Government have test equipment to apply the necessary stimulus to test the RF Power Amplifier?

The offeror must supply only the “special test equipment” unique to the design of the EDU to be delivered to AFRL. AFRL will supply its own “standard” test equipment including the necessary GPS signal generation equipment to test the EDU.

26. Re: Software -- Does Software include firmware (e.g., VHDL)?

Yes.

27. Re: Input to RF Amplifier -- Will the 10.23MHz reference (used to generate the L1/L2/L5 signals) be available as an input to the RF Power Amplifier?

Yes, AFRL will supply the 10.23MHz reference input for operation of the delivered EDU hardware.

Note this acquisition only deals with the L1-band GPS signal set.

28. Re: Threshold and Objective -- What are the conditions and assumptions for the Threshold/Objective “Life” requirements (e.g., “Nominal Operating Temperature (baseplate):

10 to 30 deg C (threshold); 0 to 40 deg C (objective)”? Normally a vendor or supplier for a complicated system will provide the failure rate as a function of temp, stress, etc.

Refer to answer #24. The same conditions apply in this case.

29. Re: Control/Monitor -- In the Control/Monitor block shown in Fig. 1: L-Band RF Power Amplifier Basic Architecture, is there a specific standardized interface used for communication to the amplifier from the spacecraft?

The Control/Monitor block is considered to be the interface currently used in the GPS III L1-band GaAs solid state RF power amplifier design. The emphasis of this procurement is the actual amplifier itself, however if the performance of your amplifier design is critically dependent upon a specific instantiation of the Control/Monitor block that might require significant modifications to the current design, we expect those to be noted and impacts discussed in your proposal.

30. Re: Program Design Criteria and Assumptions -- On page 2 it is stated, "For the purposes of this BAA, available spacecraft bus voltages to the navigation payload should be considered in the range from 28 VDC to 100 VDC." Does this mean that the Power Conditioning/Distribution block is to operate over a 28 VDC to 100 VDC input range?

No. The offeror is free to choose the operating voltage(s) of the amplifier design within that voltage range which are typical of spacecraft bus voltages that are either currently used on GPS III (currently 28 VDC), or may be used in future block changes of the GPS III constellation (70 VDC buses have been discussed). We do however expect a discussion of any intermediate voltage conversion/power processing stages that might be required to take the spacecraft bus voltage and provide it in a form and quality the amplifier can use. Obviously the overall efficiency goal will the impacted by the serial efficiencies of each device (including voltage conversion/processing stages) in the amplifier power chain and we do expect this to be included in the proposal discussion and when addressing the threshold and objective performance goals.