Notice of Intent to Negotiate Sole Source for Multi-Channel RF Digital Transceiver

Purpose: Purchase of one multi-channel RF digital transceiver to support the IWRAP (C- and Ku-band) airborne radar, which routinely operates on the NOAA WP-3D Hurricane Hunter aircraft. SCOPE OR MISSION: STAR scientists lead efforts to develop, test, validate, and refine the science algorithms needed to drive user-defined products. STAR also investigates both enhanced and new sensor technology for future NOAA satellite missions. STAR research examines which products users will need (including ocean, ecosystem, climate, and weather products) to carry out NOAA's mission goals. STAR supports the calibration and validation of all data in NOAA's satellite operations. In addition to maintaining existing calibration sites, STAR develops new methods for inter-calibrating data from NOAA polar and geostationary satellites with other satellites in the evolving international system. In addition, STAR collaboratively develops efficient methods and technology to transfer new products from research to operations. BACKGROUND: This requisition is to enhance STAR's capability to maintain and operate radar equipment used aboard NOAA Hurricane Hunter aircraft: reduce the size, weight and power; add additional computing resources to enable new real-time products that will aid both with in-flight mission planning and nowcasting. The IWRAP radar collects and processes multiple data streams at C- and Ku-band (4.97 to 5.7 GHz and 11.2 to 14.5 GHz, respectively) during hurricane and extratropical winter storm experiments. External calibration and verification of the operation of this radar is required to be performed before, after, and, sometimes, during experiments to ensure reliable data quality. To improve the instrument's performance, replacing much of the analog transceiver hardware with a digital transceiver, will improve calibration stability, provide greater flexibility in sampling, and reduce the size of the overall system. This will permit additional complementary sensors, such as KaIA, to utilize rack space on the WP-3D, which is limited. Enhanced real-time computing and data rate storage will allow for new algorithms for measuring the marine boundary layer winds to be implemented and validated. This will then improve the research capabilities of the IWRAP instrument, which are desired by scientific communities primarily to reduce risk of future ocean-wind-sensing spaceborne missions (e.g., EPS-SG SCA) and to improve understanding of the atmospheric dynamics in tropical and extratropical cyclones. REQUIREMENT: The NESDIS Center for Satellite Applications and Research (STAR) requires the purchase of digital transceiver that can operate in conjunction with the Remote Sensing Solutions ARENA 103 Radar Control and Timing Module with Control and Time Synchronization Expansion Mezzanine Card (commonly referred to as the CTU) with minimal supporting hardware and replace most of the C- and Ku-band analog transceiver hardware. SEE RFQ FOR SPECIFICATIONS AND DETAILS