Waveguide to Fiber Concentrator System

This is a Notice of Proposed Contract Action under the FAR Part 12 Acquisition of Commercial Items and FAR Part 13 Simplified Acquisition Procedures. This notice is for information only; a solicitation will not be issued. THIS IS NOT A REQUEST FOR QUOTATION. No contract will be awarded on the basis of offers received in response to this notice. The associated North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code is 334413 with a small business size standard of 1,250 employees. AFRL/RITA requires the purchase of five (5) Waveguide-to-Fiber Concentrator System with the following capabilities: The optical device must be capable of mating off-the-shelf fiber arrays with integrated photonic circuits (chip) at 1550 nm (1530 - 1570nm) with lowest possible loss. The device must act as a pitch reducer, connecting a 125um pitch, 26 channel single-mode fiber array to a 26 channel, 125/5um pitch photonic waveguide array. Chip interface must be "butt coupled" and clear 50 um ledge on customer chip. The fiber array must fan out to FC/PC connectorized "pigtails" for interfacing with standard fiber components. Fibers must be polarization maintaining with slow axis aligned to horizontal plane at chip interface. For lowest loss, device must 3D mode-match fiber mode-diameter (standard SMF 10 um) to waveguide mode-diameter of 2um (at least 3 um required). All other losses must be minimized. All crosstalk must be minimized (<20db). The Government intends to negotiate a sole source contract for the purchase of the system described above with: Teem Photonics 61, chemin du vieux chene 38240 Meylan France The Government has determined that no other source can meet the requirements for this turn-key system. Teem photonics Waveguide to Fiber Transposer chips are the only known product able to meet all specifications with lowest possible loss. All competing companies perform only 2D mode matching. Teem photonics offers 3D modematching via a proprietary process for lowest possible loss. This is a notice of proposed contract action and NOT a request for competitive proposals; however, all responsible sources may submit a capability statement or proposal, which shall be considered by the agency. All inquiries should be sent by email to richard.childres @us.af.mil. Responses must be submitted by the date/time listed on the notice. Any response to this notice must show clear and convincing evidence that competition would be advantageous to the Government in future procurements. Responses received will be evaluated; however a determination by the Government not to compete the proposed procurement based upon responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government. The Government anticipates an award date on or before 31 May 2017. A Sole Source Justification will be attached to the subsequent Notice of Award.