15. 1 Small Business Innovation Research (sbir) Proposal Submission Instructions Revised Closing Date: February 25, 2015, at 6: 00 a m. Et
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| PRIVATE SECTOR COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL/DUAL-USE APPLICATIONS: In addition to benefits provided to the Department of Defense (DoD), the application of a technology that could safely remove airfield paint markings and aircraft tire rubber build-up from AM2 mat surfaces could provide the ability to safely remove these items from commercial airfield materials. By removing airfield paint markings and aircraft tire rubber build-up early on, maintenance work and preventive measures can be taken to ensure the safety of pilots and ground crew.
REFERENCES: 1. Pre-Engineered Structures: Short Airfield for Tactical Support. Retrieved from www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/navy/nrtc/14251_ch11.pdf 2. Foster, D., & Anderson, M. (2003). Rapid Forward Deployment Made Easier with Composite Airfield Matting. The AMPTIAC Quarterly, 7, 1. 17-22. 3. MPR 1213-Rev. K, Sheet 3 of 15, Material Requirements and Approved Coating Systems (Companies), provided by TPOC and uploaded in SITIS 1/29/2015. KEYWORDS: Expeditionary Airfield (Eaf); Mat; method; AM2; Markings; Aircraft tire rubber build-up Questions may also be submitted through DoD SBIR/STTR SITIS website. N151-023 TITLE: Low-Cost-By-Design Widely Tunable Mid-Wave Infrared Surface Emitting Lasers TECHNOLOGY AREAS: Air Platform, Chemical/Bio Defense, Electronics ACQUISITION PROGRAM: JSF-MS OBJECTIVE: Develop a low-cost, robust, compact, widely tunable surface-emitting (SE) semiconductor laser with no mechanical moving parts of any kind. The device development in this program should enable significant performance improvement over the current incumbent mid-wave infrared (MWIR) semiconductor laser technology. More importantly, this program will enable game-changing wafer-level fabrication and testing for the MWIR tunable lasers to substantially reduce the cost of manufacturing by design and hence the affordability of the lasers. DESCRIPTION: Quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) are being steadily incorporated into current and future Navy applications such as directional infrared countermeasure (DIRCM) and other surveillance mine and improvised explosive device sensing applications. In particular, the DIRCM performance could be substantially improved by the use of high-power widely tunable mid-wave infrared (MWIR) QCLs with excellent beam quality, which can defeat the future-generation missile infrared (IR) seeker head with laser-jamming wavelength-blocking countermeasures. However, serious performance and reliability gaps exist in commercially available external-cavity tuned QCLs [1, 2] that can prevent them from transitioning onto military platforms. These issues include high sensitivity to shock and vibration; high temperature variations of the precision optical alignment of all the external optical elements and mechanical moving parts; high manufacturing cost of the entire hybrid assembly of QCL and external optics; and, the inherently slow tuning speed due to required mechanical movement of grating for tuning. Current Navy research efforts are focusing on developing a completely monolithic, edge-emitting QCL solution with extremely wide wavelength tunability, high CW output power, and excellent beam quality Monolithic SE MWIR QCLs hold promise for significant advantages over their edge-emitting counterparts in terms of both reliable operation and manufacturing cost. Recent reliability studies have shown that edge-emitting QCLs’ failure modes are triggered by the QCLs’ high facet optical-power densities and/or temperatures which, in turn, generally limit the reliable output power of edge-emitting QCLs. The Navy is also working on developing SE non-tunable QCLs to circumvent the reliability drawbacks of edge-emitting QCLs. More importantly, one of the Navy’s goals is also to significantly improve the affordability of the MWIR QCLs. The cost reduction of the SE QCLs is primarily achieved via the elimination of a few high-cost, low-yield, labor intensive fabrication and packaging steps such as wafer lapping, cleaving, dicing, facet coatings, and chip bonding, etc., which amount to 60 to 75% of the total cost of manufacturing the edge-emitting QCLs. The device developed as a result of this SBIR should enable significant performance improvement over the current incumbent MWIR semiconductor laser technology. More importantly, successful technology development will enable game-changing wafer-level fabrication and testing for the MWIR tunable lasers to substantially reduce the cost of manufacturing by design and hence the affordability of the lasers. Each of the above-mentioned Navy efforts is on track to deliver each of its performance, affordability, and reliability objectives. Because of the unique affordability advantage of the SE QCLs and the performance and reliability benefits of the monolithic tunable QCLs, it is the goal of this SBIR to combine the best of both technologies to develop a low-cost-by-design, widely tunable MWIR SE QCL with unique, unparalleled combination of unprecedented high affordability, performance, and reliability. PHASE I: Develop and prove feasibility of a viable, robust, and manufacturable design for a single widely tunable SE QCL with a room-temperature CW output power > 1 W over the entire tunable range at least ±12% from a center wavelength around ~4.6 micron with near diffraction-limited beam quality (M2 < 1.5). A viable design path forward for further increasing the output power of the SE tunable laser operating at CW mode at room temperature scheme should be proposed and included as part of the deliverable for Phase I. PHASE II: Fabricate, demonstrate, and deliver a prototype of widely tunable SE QCL with output emission out of a single aperture with output power > 5 W CW and outstanding beam quality (M2 < 1.5) over the entire tunable range at least ±12% from a center wavelength around ~4.6 micron. Further demonstrate a viable path forward to power-scale the tunable SE QCL monolithically at the wafer level without external optics to power levels exceeding 20 W CW while maintaining M2 < 1.5. It is critical to incorporate manufacturing cost reduction as part of the design criteria throughout all the design phases in all phases of this program. PHASE III: Fully develop and transition the widely tunable SE QCL for Department of Defense (DoD) application in the areas of DIRCM, advanced chemical sensors, LIDAR, and commercial applications. PRIVATE SECTOR COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL/DUAL-USE APPLICATIONS: The commercial sector can significantly benefit from this technology development in the areas of detection of toxic industrial gases, environmental monitoring, and non-invasive medical health monitoring and sensing. REFERENCES: 1. Caffey, D., et al. (2011). Recent results from broadly tunable external cavity quantum cascade lasers. Presentation 7953-54. Paper presented at the International Society for Optics and Photonics, Photonics West 2011, San Francisco, California. doi: 10.1117/12.875093 2. Hugi, A., et al. (2009). External cavity quantum cascade laser tunable from 7.6 to 11.4 um. Appl. Phys. Lett., 95, 61103. KEYWORDS: Sensing; Qcl; Tunable; High Power; DIRCM; surface emitting Questions may also be submitted through DoD SBIR/STTR SITIS website. N151-024 TITLE: Next Generation In-Situ Antenna Analysis and Design Toolbox TECHNOLOGY AREAS: Sensors, Battlespace ACQUISITION PROGRAM: PMA 275 OBJECTIVE: Develop an innovative, exact-physics (EP), fast, high-order-accurate computational electromagnetics (CEM) capability that, in present-day computer clusters, can accurately simulate in-situ antenna performance on platforms of electrical length of the order of 500 to 1000 wavelengths and beyond. DESCRIPTION: Measurement-based approaches to in-situ antenna characterization, while highly valuable for validation purposes, are unrealistically slow and very expensive in the design stage. Advances in CEM and computer technology are allowing us to gradually replace measurements in the design stage with electromagnetic (EM) modeling and simulation (M&S). In the frequency domain (FD), the domain of interest in this solicitation, there exist commercial-strength EM M&S codes, both EP and high-frequency (HF) ones, that do a commendable job. Those based on HF methods are limited in the accuracy they can provide while the ones based on EP can provide accuracy but cannot handle electrically large platforms principally because of the very large and dense systems of linear equations they generate. Even using today’s CPU/GPU clusters, EP codes cannot handle a large platform without substantial cost in hardware and execution time. For this reason, the past decade has seen an intense research effort in overcoming these shortcomings [refs. 1 – 4]. Research results indicate that advances in CEM may enable accurate EP simulation of vitally important, electrically large radiation problems arising from aircraft-mounted antenna systems, and, therefore, may provide an enabling alternative to measurement, and a significantly more accurate substitute for methods based on HF approximations. A FD, EP, boundary-integral-equation EM M&S software capability is sought. It should be able to read a CAD file of a structure with a large number (> 10) of antennas mounted on it, and have the ability to effectively evaluate the electromagnetic fields in prescribed regions of space, taking into account the structure’s geometry and material properties (as well as those of the antennas). The computational engine should provide high-order accuracy and an order-of-magnitude acceleration over current solvers (high-order accuracy occurs when the reductions in the solution error that result from a given reduction in the mesh-size h amount to a "high" power p of the mesh-size reduction factor). The goal is to be able to handle a 1,000-wavelength-long platform in a moderate size CPU/GPU cluster at a tenth of the current computational cost of a commercial, accelerated, moment method code that uses RWG functions [ref. 5]. (As an example, the current NAVAIR 4.5.5 GPU cluster comprises a master node and ten compute nodes. Each compute node has 1 Intel E5620 Dual Processor Quad Core, 48 GB RAM, 2 TB HDD, and 4 NVIDIA Tesla M2070 6 GB modules. The master node has 1 Intel E5620 Dual Processor Quad Core, 24 GB RAM, and 500 GB HDD). A well designed Graphical User Interface (GUI) should be made available for easy access to the software capabilities. The proposer should demonstrate, in the proposal, ownership of all existing and to-be-developed source code or an appropriate arrangement with a subcontractor. PHASE I: Demonstrate the feasibility, on the basis of CAD descriptions of aircraft and antennas, of a solution for 1,000-wavelength radiation problems with high order accuracy in present day distributed memory computer clusters. PHASE II: Refine the methodology developed during Phase I to demonstrate the solution for a very large platform (1000 wavelengths in size) with at least ten antennas on it. The antenna-platform system will comprise both perfect conductors and dielectric materials. Develop a user friendly GUI with good pre- and post-processing capability. PHASE III: Refine the tools developed during Phase II and develop a commercial-grade software tool that provides an end-to-end modeling capability for Navy and civilian application areas. Refine GUI and provide thorough user documentation. Fully implement hardware acceleration on latest technology computer clusters. PRIVATE SECTOR COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL/DUAL-USE APPLICATIONS: Antenna in-situ performance and co-site interference are problems common to both military and commercial aircraft. This tool will find equal use in commercial avionics as in military ones. REFERENCES: 1. Jørgensen, E., Volakis, J.L., Meincke P. & O. Breinbjerg, (2004). Higher Order Hierarchical Legendre Basis Functions for Electromagnetic Modeling, IEEE Trans Antennas Propagat, Vol. 52, No. 11, pp. 2985-2995. 2. Notaroš, B.M. (2008). Higher Order Frequency-Domain Computational Electromagnetics, IEEE Trans Antennas Propagat, Vol. 56, No. 8, pp. 2251-2276. 3. Bruno, O., Elling, T., Paffenroth, R. & Turc, C. (2009). Electromagnetic integral equations requiring a small number of Krylov-subspace iterations, J. Comp. Phys., Vol. 228, pp. 6169-6183. 4. Kaufmann, T. (2011). The Meshless Radial Point Interpolation Method for Electromagnetics. Doctor of Sciences thesis, ETH Zurich. 5. Rao, S. M., Wilton, D. R. & Glisson, A. W. (1982). Electromagnetic scattering by surfaces of arbitrary shape, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag.,vol. AP-30, no. 3, pp. 409–418. KEYWORDS: Computational Electromagnetics; Cpu/Gpu Clusters; exact physics methods; in-situ antenna analysis; high-order accurate; GUI design Questions may also be submitted through DoD SBIR/STTR SITIS website. N151-025 TITLE: Ignition Composition with Low Moisture Susceptibility TECHNOLOGY AREAS: Air Platform, Materials/Processes, Weapons ACQUISITION PROGRAM: PMA 272 The technology within this topic is restricted under the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR), 22 CFR Parts 120-130, which controls the export and import of defense-related material and services, including export of sensitive technical data, or the Export Administration Regulation (EAR), 15 CFR Parts 730-774, which controls dual use items. Offerors must disclose any proposed use of foreign nationals (FNs), their country(ies) of origin, the type of visa or work permit possessed, and the statement of work (SOW) tasks intended for accomplishment by the FN(s) in accordance with section 5.4.c.(8) of the solicitation. Offerors are advised foreign nationals proposed to perform on this topic may be restricted due to the technical data under US Export Control Laws. OBJECTIVE: Develop an ignition composition that is not susceptible to moisture, is stable with respect to long term storage, is easy to light, provides excellent ignition transfer, is easy to fabricate, and is safe to handle. DESCRIPTION: Many Airborne Expendable Infrared Countermeasures (AEIRCMs) utilized by the U.S. Navy exploit a sympathetically ignited spring-loaded bore-sensing Safe-and-Arm (S&A) type igniter assembly. The S&A is lit by an impulse cartridge during dispense of the countermeasure. The S&A limits the ignition of the primary pyrotechnic payload until it exits the flare cartridge or is outside of the aircraft. As a result, the performance and reliability of the AEIRCM is related to (1) quickly lighting the ignition pellet within the S&A type igniter from the impulse cartridge while exiting the flare cartridge and (2) quickly lighting the primary pyrotechnic payload from the S&A’s ignition pellet upon exiting the flare cartridge or the aircraft. The ignition pellet within the S&A type igniter currently consists of a composition based on Magnesium/Teflon®/Viton® (MTV). Magnesium is known to degrade when exposed to moisture, which in return can increase ignition times and, in more extreme cases, can result in non-ignitions. Another consequence of this degradation is the evolution of hydrogen gas, which poses an ignition hazard. Identify, develop and demonstrate a replacement for the current MTV based ignition pellet in the S&A type igniter. The replacement should not be susceptible to moisture degradation, should be stable in long term storage, should be reliably ignitable by an impulse cartridge, should provide rapid ignition transfer to the primary pyrotechnic, should be simple to fabricate, and should be safe to handle and process. The operational conditions in which this ignition pellet will be evaluated range from -65 degrees F to 160 degrees F. Proposers should be able to obtain, mix and process the raw ingredients for any proposed replacement or energetic composition (Hazard Class 1.3 or 1.1). PHASE I: Develop suitable ignition compositions. Characterize ignition compositions with respect to safety (friction, static, impact, ignition temperature), aging, and ignitability. The most promising candidates should be pressed in S&A hardware for government evaluation for ignitability by impulse cartridge. The press tooling and S&A hardware will be provided as government furnished equipment and material if needed. PHASE II: Fabricate and deliver S&A type igniter assembly prototype(s) for government evaluation using various pyrotechnic payloads and compare against the MTV S&A type igniter in static and flight function tests. PHASE III: Transition a full-scale manufacturing process for proposed ignition composition material to the U.S. Navy. Lead in the manufacturing and testing efforts required to qualify the new composition for U.S. Navy use, as well as pursue potential commercial uses. PRIVATE SECTOR COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL/DUAL-USE APPLICATIONS: Various energetic mixes developed for potential commercial uses in such things as air bags, rocket motors, primers, small arms, etc. are potential commercial uses for a successful development effort. REFERENCES: 1. Conkling, J.A. & Mocella, C.J. (2010). Chemistry of Pyrotechnics: Basic Principles and Theory, 2nd Edn., CRC Press - Taylor & Francis Group, Boca Raton, FL. 2. van Driel, C.A., Leenders, J., & Meulenbrugge, J.J. (1995). Ageing of MTV. Proc. 26th Int. Ann. Conf. of ICT, Karlsruhe, Germany. KEYWORDS: Countermeasures; Moisture; Ignition; Flare; Magnesium; Pyrotechnic Questions may also be submitted through DoD SBIR/STTR SITIS website. N151-026 TITLE: Small Non-Cooperative Collision Avoidance Systems Suited to Small Tactical Unmanned Systems TECHNOLOGY AREAS: Sensors, Electronics ACQUISITION PROGRAM: PMA 263 The technology within this topic is restricted under the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR), 22 CFR Parts 120-130, which controls the export and import of defense-related material and services, including export of sensitive technical data, or the Export Administration Regulation (EAR), 15 CFR Parts 730-774, which controls dual use items. Offerors must disclose any proposed use of foreign nationals (FNs), their country(ies) of origin, the type of visa or work permit possessed, and the statement of work (SOW) tasks intended for accomplishment by the FN(s) in accordance with section 5.4.c.(8) of the solicitation. Offerors are advised foreign nationals proposed to perform on this topic may be restricted due to the technical data under US Export Control Laws. OBJECTIVE: Develop a non-cooperative compact collision avoidance system with Space, Weight, and Power (SWaP) characteristics suited for small tactical Group 2/3 unmanned aerial system (UAS). DESCRIPTION: New Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rules for Next Generation (NextGen) national airspace surveillance strategy, which are set to be implemented by 2020, will strengthen the requirements for most aircraft, in most airspace, to determine their position via satellite navigation and periodically broadcast it out for receipt by air traffic control ground stations as well as other aircraft. Aircraft will be required to have at least one of the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) “out” standards, either 1090 or 978 megahertz (MHz), to broadcast their position and velocity data. The data is broadcast every second, providing real-time position information that will, in most cases, be more accurate than the information provided by the primary and secondary radar based systems that are currently in use. Aircraft to aircraft ADS-B transmission will also permit highly reliable self-separation and collision avoidance for any aircraft outfitted with dual frequency ADS-B “in”, enabling the aircraft to avoid other aircraft that are “co-operating” in the environment. However, there will remain in all airspace, aircraft that are not transmitting ADS-B “out”. These may be aircraft that either do not have a transmitter, or that have a transmitter that is turned off or has failed. These non-cooperating aircraft will continue to pose a collision hazard for UAS. A collision avoidance system that does not rely solely on co-operating aircraft that are ADS-B equipped is needed to ensure safe integration of UAS into the airspace. This system should ideally utilize ADS-B and in all aspects provide information for pilot oversight, self-separation and collision avoidance. It should additionally provide a fully autonomous self-separation and collision avoidance capability as an option of last resort. Non-cooperative approaches have included visible and infrared (IR) camera systems, acoustic systems, radar systems and other radio frequency (RF) distance measuring technologies. The advent of Software Definable Radios (SDR) could potentially lead to an effective RF non-cooperative collision avoidance system with a small SWaP suitable for use with even small UAS. The solution will be required to fit on a Group 2/3 UAS (such as the Aerosonde, Scan Eagle, RQ-21A Blackjack, or RQ-7B Shadow air vehicles and systems). An additional project goal would be compatibility with smaller Group 1 Small Unit Remote Scouting Systems (SURSS) such as the RQ-20A Puma, RQ-11B Raven, and RQ-12A Wasp family of systems. For a non-cooperative collision avoidance system to be accepted as a component technology of a Group 2 or Group 3 UAS, the SWaP consumption is a critical parameter. To be compatible with Small Tactical UAS (STUAS), the solution needs to have a small SWaP allowing for mission payloads and a low cost for baseline UAS system incorporation. Given the payload capacity of Scan Eagle (a Group 2 UAS) is on the order of 7.5 pounds at 60 watts, it is expected the SWaP for a non-cooperative collision avoidance system be a fraction of this capacity. All airborne hardware should weigh less than 12 ounces and consume less than 27 cubic inches of total space, with a power draw of less than 25 watts average. The collision avoidance system hardware can be distributed to various locations on the air vehicle but cannot significantly affect weight and balance or aerodynamic performance. A range of 2 to 5 miles for small RF cross section targets is needed. All UAS flyable weather performance is desired, Successful laboratory demonstration by simulation of software-in-the-loop (SIL) and/ or hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) would be the first step towards a successful product. Desired next level testing would include air demonstrations in a restricted airspace environment, ideally in conjunction with a fully instrumented test range. These range demonstrations would be used to document the “mission readiness” and expected “mission effectiveness” of the system prior to testing in operational environments. Good results from restricted range testing would provide the leverage to help with the safety case for the use of UAS for emergency course of action (COA) response. The results would also be applicable for improvements in the integrated UAS mission capability for all military applications. PHASE I: Demonstrate the feasibility of an all-weather non-cooperative collision avoidance system through modeling and simulation demonstrations. Candidate tasks are (1) comprehensive modeling of the system approach; (2) demonstration of the key performance parameters (KPP) that will define detection performance; (3) performance evaluations of the design in terms of target detection and localization capabilities; (4) identification of performance limitations and hardware requirements to prepare for Phase II hardware implementation. Determine preliminary hardware design for Phase II effort. PHASE II: Develop a prototype, non-cooperative collision avoidance system suitable for testing on manned or unmanned platforms. Implement the hardware design initiated in Phase I using commercial-of-the-self (COTS) components where possible. Fully investigate the performance and capability of the demonstration system. Plan for a flight demonstration of the system on either manned surrogate UAS or military UAS platform, if available. It is expected that the UAS or military UAS platform, will be provided as Government Furnished Equipment (GFE) or range support. Sense and Avoid (SAA) data should be collected and analyzed to determine the effectiveness of the system under realistic operating conditions. This SAA data should be delivered in a form that can be used to help justify the safety case of using UAS for various mission scenarios. |