D -- RELAY OF SAFETY OF LIFE DATA FROM GPS AND OTHER MID EARTH ORBITING SATELLITES TO NOAA GROUNDSTATIONS

This request for information (RFI) is for planning purposes in accordance with the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) clause 52.215 3 (OCT 1997). The purpose of this request is to solicit an expression of interest and potential capability for building a ground station that will track, demodulate, and locate distress signals emitted by 406 MHz EPIRBs, SSAS beacons, ELTs, and PLBs, and relayed through bent pipe repeaters on board Global Positioning Satellites and other Mid Earth Orbiting satellites. The ground station will be located in Hawaii and the data will be relayed to the United States Mission Control Center located in NOAA?s National Satellite Operations Facility in Suitland, MD. The ground station will have the capability to track multiple satellites simultaneously and locate the beacon signals that appear in three or more satellites. Locations of distress signals are computed using difference of Time of Arrival (TOA) and Frequency of Arrival (FOA) algorithms on the beacon signal. The ground station is intended to be used with another ground station located on the east coast of the United States such that the two ground stations together will provide coverage of the entire US Area of Responsibility (AOR). Ground stations in the Cospas-Sarsat system are referred to as Local User Terminals or LUTs. The Mid-Earth Orbiting LUT will be referred to as a MEOLUT. See attached for details on the RFI.