NASA is seeking proposals for innovative research in the areas of on-orbit positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT). Tahoe RF is proposing to build a fully integrated radiation hardened beam steerable GPS receiver front end system that will support NASA's requirements for onboard navigation systems for on-orbit near-earth missions. This frontend system, termed "BeamDirect", will not only provide NASA with a software configurable radio receiver for all of the GPS frequency bands, but will also provide ability to do beamforming and beamsteering under software control. Tahoe RF is uniquely positioned to develop this system for NASA for two reasons. First, Tahoe RF has a proven core competency for the design of high performance multiple integrated GPS receivers on a single die. Second, Tahoe RF has recently demonstrated the feasibility of an integrated monolithic beamformer Integrated Circuit (IC) that employs LO phase-shifting techniques through coupled oscillator array. Both of these systems (GPS receiver ICs and beamformers IC) were developed in IBM SiGe process that inherently provides radiation tolerance. Hence by integrating both of these technologies, Tahoe RF can uniquely provide a fully integrated, miniaturized, radiation hardened beam-steerable GPS frontend receiver system.
