Distributed Aperture Resilient Terminal System (DARTS)

Request For Information (RFI) – Distributed Aperture Resilient Terminal System (DARTS)

1.0 INTRODUCTION

1.1 ORGANIZATION

This Request for Information (RFI) is sponsored by Project Manager Integrated Enterprise Network (PM IEN) Product Manager Wideband Enterprise Satellite Systems (PdM WESS) with support from the DEVCOM Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C5ISR) Center. PdM WESS is a U.S. Army office that acquires, fields, and modernizes strategic satellite communications (SATCOM) for the Department of War (DoW). Located at Fort Belvoir, VA, it provides secure, high-speed global connectivity for the military.

1.2 BACKGROUND & SCOPE

Current enterprise satellite communication (SATCOM) terminals rely on large, single-aperture antennas. These large antennas require significant infrastructure, have long timelines for installation, are easily targeted, and often present a single point of failure for the Army SATCOM network. The Army is researching a Distributed Aperture Resilient Terminal System (DARTS) to provide a resilient means to augment enterprise communications with a quickly deployable array of multiple smaller SATCOM antennas.

Advances in digital signal processing technology and digital radio frequency (RF) transport have created an emerging commercial market of components with the ability to efficiently divide, combine and transport RF signals to and from multiple antennas. On receive, signal processing technology can enable the coherent combination of signals from multiple distant antennas to form an antenna array that replicates a large antenna’s performance. On transmit, where regulatory challenges don’t make coherent combining practical, commercial components that divide and route RF signals in the digital domain present the opportunity to dynamically assign transmit carriers to constituent apertures and replicate the carrier Effective Isotropic Radiated Power (EIRP) of a large...