Airbus DS Ltd
Project Funded in the CEOI-ST 8th Call for EO Technologies
Flagship Project
The proposed work is intended to develop existing Radar Electronics products, developed by Airbus Defence and Space in Portsmouth, to enable them to support a broader range of future missions than currently possible.
The research and critical developments to be undertaken will include the evolution and demonstration of hardware modules applicable to the ICE and NIA products. The requirements of the BIOMASS and SAOCOM-CS missions (to the extent that they are currently known) will be used to guide the bread-boarding and demonstration activities.
The proposed work is broken down into three areas for which TRL will be raised towards 5/6:
- ICE Receive Module modification & bread-boarding for low frequency operation and enhanced science data interface flexibility
- Qualification of the Virtex-5 FPGA in agreement with ESA parts experts
- Development of an embedded computer option for the NIA product to broaden its applicability to a range of future ESA missions.