Radiation Hardened High Speed Fiber Optic Transceivers for Extreme Environments

This program develops fiber optic transceivers that offer wide bandwidth (1 Mbps to 10 Gbps) and operate in space environments targeted by NASA for robotic exploration. These environments require components that can operate over a much wider temperature range than available with commercial fiber optic technology. The goal of this research is to develop a process platform to create fiber optic components that operate in the space environment (radiation, temperature, vibration, etc.) and leverage commercial performance/protocols for data transmission. Our overall goal is to create the market availability of space fiber optic transceivers for backbone data communications operating on standard protocols. This will eliminate current cycle of NRE-funded transceiver developments. This is opportunity to provide significant government savings, and reduce risk and associate programs delays that occurred with highly customized fiber optic development.

The goal is to enable NASA to field high-resolution sensors and computational systems in robotic exploration missions throughout the Solar System. NASA is pursuing technologies for robotic exploration of the Solar System including its planets, their moons, and small bodies. NASA has a development program that includes technologies for the atmospheric entry, descent, and landing, mobility systems, extreme environments technology, sample acquisition and preparation for in situ experiments, and planetary science instruments. Robotic exploration missions that are planned include a Europa Jupiter System mission, Titan Saturn System mission, Venus Explorer, samples from Comet or Asteroid and continued Mars exploration.

The CORE components are being developed for general use in harsh environments and this program will benefit in the costs savings created by volume manufacturing and sales. UltraComm is currently pursuing the JSF program with potential sales volume of 18,000 units annually and a lifetime expectancy of 150,000 units. Our first deliveries to C-MAC began in the spring of 2011, with production sales beginning in Q4 2012. The CORE is also base-lined and prototype deliveries have been made into a major space program with Honeywell, F-18 Fibre Channel Switch upgrades with Harris, and Lockheed Martin's advanced transceiver program (next generation optical interconnect). Fiber optics holds significant advantages over copper for high-speed data communications in space applications – it neither produces nor is affected by EMI, it offers ground isolation between electronic units, reduced power, reduced size and reduced weight. Mil-airframes are increasingly fielding fiber optic wiring infrastructures as a long-term solution to bandwidth upgrades (for example, Joint Strike Fighter, Raptor, F-18 and B-2).

This is a mature technology (TRL 7) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.