On March 7, the U.S. Army posted a sources sought notice for Persistent Surveillance Systems-Tethered (PSS-T) Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) Integration with Digital Receiver Technology’s (DRT) 3300 Sensor. Responses are due by 11:00 a.m. Eastern on March 18.

Product Director (PD) Aerostats is conducting market research to determine vendors that have experience developing radio frequency (RF) over fiber integration solutions that have a solution to integrate DRT’s 3300 Sensor onto Persistent Surveillance Systems-Tethered (PSS-T) aerostats. The Army has an IMMEDIATE NEED to integrate and to deploy the DRT’s 3300 Sensor on PSS-T aerostats in theater. Minimum requirements for the integration include the following:

1. The proposed solution must be capable of voice intercept and direction finding (DF).

2. Frequency range of integrated antennas shall include VHF/UHF/L-Band with an effective ground trace collection range of 25 kilometers with an objective range of 50 kilometers or more.

3. The solution must be integrated into three separate enclaves: the airborne component, the fiber optic tether component, and the ground processing component. The solution provider will design the digitized RF/IF-over-fiber link which must be compatible with single mode fiber using an approach which supports the specified frequency range, throughput, and channelization requirements.

4. The DRT 3300 will not be part of the aerostat payload, but will be located at a nearby ground processing location. Only the antennas will be part of the aerostat payload.

5. The solution will not cause a change in the current classification of the PSS-T system (envelope, tether, and GCS), and remain on a separate network in its entirety.

6. The proposed solution shall not degrade from current performance standards of the PSS-T tether. The system must operate on a single mode fiber that supports data transmission.

7. Solution will be demonstrated in end-to-end system test in a laboratory environment with test conditions specified by the Government. Subsequent performance testing will be conducted on a Government range, where the government will conduct scenario based testing to fully test the sensors’ capabilities.

8. The solution shall meet the performance requirements outlined in MIL-STD-810 Part Two Sections 500 through 528; and IEEE 1900.2-2008 Recommended Practice for the Analysis of In-Band and Adjacent Band Interference and Coexistence Between Radio Systems.

9. The Government will provide the PSS-T system and available PSS-T technical data to allow for test and integration of the DRT 3300 sensor.

Full information is available here.

Source: FedBizOpps