Active

Contract Opportunity

Procurement Technical Assistance Centers (PTACs) are an official government contracting resource for small businesses. Find your local PTAC (opens in new window) for free government expertise related to contract opportunities.

PROGRAM TITLE: Satellite-Based Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast (SBA) Service for Oceanic Air Traffic Control

Name: Phil Moyers, FAA Contracting Officer

Organization: Surveillance Contracts Branch, AAQ-210

Region: FAA Headquarters

Phone Number: 202-267-7165

Email: Phillip.L.Moyers@faa.gov

RFI Release Date: April 7, 2023

Industry Comments and Questions Due: April 21, 2023

SBA General Information Session and Vendor One-on-One Sessions: May 8 – May 12, 2023

RFI Industry Reponses Due: May 26, 2023

Procurement Method: Request for Information

Alternate Contact: Nathan Laycook, FAA Contract Specialist

Organization: Surveillance Contracts Branch, AAQ-210

Region: FAA Headquarters

Phone Number: 703-727-5040

Email: Nathan.L.Laycook@faa.gov

I. INTRODUCTION

This announcement is being issued in accordance with the FAA Acquisition Management System (AMS) Section 3.2.1.2.1. Interested parties are advised that:

This is a Request for Information (RFI). This RFI shall not be construed as a Request for Proposal (RFP), or any solicitation or obligation on the part of the FAA (the Government). The Government does not intend to select or qualify proposals or offers on the basis of this RFI or otherwise pay for information obtained via this RFI or in response to this notice. The FAA is not seeking or accepting unsolicited proposals. The FAA will not pay for any information received or costs incurred in preparing the response to the RFI. Any costs associated with the RFI response submittals are solely at the interested party's expense. The FAA reserves the right to have communication with all, any but not all, or none of the respondents and, upon submittal, any documentation and information becomes the property of the FAA. The FAA reserves the right not to respond to any comments, questions, feedback, or information received from one or more than one respondent. The FAA also reserves the right to engage in written dialogue with respondents.

To the extent that information received in response to this RFI is proprietary, or otherwise confidential commercial information, the vendor should mark their response with a restrictive legend and should be willing to provide justification to the FAA of such designations if requested. This market survey in no way alters the FAA’s obligations under existing law, including any duties owed by the FAA under the Freedom of Information Act.

II. BACKGROUND

In United States (U.S.) oceanic airspace, Future Air Navigation System (FANS)-1/A equipped aircraft provide position reports using Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Contract (ADS-C). Pilots of aircraft without FANS-1/A provide position reports over High Frequency (HF) voice communications through a third-party radio operator. ADS-C provides periodic aircraft position updates – set by Air Traffic Control (ATC) to support procedural separation (e.g., once every three or 10 minutes) – while pilot position reports occur approximately every hour. In contrast, terrestrial Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) provides position reports as frequently as every second.

The FAA is seeking to understand industry interest and capabilities to provide a cost beneficial SBA surveillance service that is suitable for ATC separation services in U.S. oceanic airspace regions. Since the last FAA market survey on this topic in 2012, provider options have expanded with potential new vendors and business models. Desired candidate SBA relay services will be capable of meeting ATC surveillance performance requirements in which aircraft in oceanic airspace can be identified and separated in real-time without changes to the aircraft. These candidate systems will be able to provide full-service availability within the next three to five years.

The envisioned Satellite-Based Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (SBA) service will leverage ADS-B’s ability to provide more frequent reports to reduce procedural separation. The SBA service will use a commercially-operated satellite-based infrastructure that receives ADS-B Out messages, transmitted from ADS-B equipped aircraft, and relays the messages to a ground station. The SBA service provider will then process the messages and compose FAA Category 33 (CAT033) formatted reports containing aircraft information, including position, velocity, and identification. The SBA surveillance update rate is expected to be more frequent than ADS-C and HF radio position reporting and, therefore, will provide more details for tracking of aircraft paths. With surveillance improvement in oceanic airspace, there is a potential for reduced oceanic distance and time-based separation minima, as well as more efficient service to operators. Additional detail on U.S. oceanic airspace may be found in the Concept of Operations (CONOPS) document, Attachment A, Section 2.

A) Buy American Act

Changes in applicable law, such as regulatory changes implementing the Buy American Act, may impact future SBA requirements. On July 18, 2019, the FAA updated its acquisition policy to ensure consistency with Executive Order 13881 “Maximizing Use of American Made Goods, Products, and Materials”. The updates reflect the following changes:

1. Increase in domestic content requirement for domestic end products and domestic construction material from 50% to 55%;

2. Increase in price preferences for domestic offers from 12% to 30% for small businesses and from 6% to 20% for other than small businesses;

3. Increase in percentage higher at which the price of domestic construction material would be considered unreasonable from 6% to 20%.

The FAA continues to monitor and strictly adhere to Buy American requirements and encourages interested parties to remain current on legislative and regulatory changes that may impact the SBA requirements.

B) National Defense Authorization Act

The 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) prohibits the Federal Government from obtaining or extending a contract to obtain “any equipment, system, or service that uses covered telecommunications equipment or services as a substantial or essential component of any system, or as critical technology as part of any system” provided by certain companies or their subsidiaries. The FAA’s Acquisition Policy also implements the provisions of Section 889(a) of the 2019 NDAA that prohibit agency procurement of certain “covered telecommunications equipment” as well as procurement from an entity that uses such equipment.

III. PURPOSE

The purpose of this RFI is the following:

A) Provide information to industry about the FAA’s envisioned operational concepts and technical requirements for a future SBA service for oceanic aircraft surveillance

B) Request information from vendors regarding technical design and capabilities, cost, and schedule of their existing or planned SBA service

C) Gain an understanding of vendor partnerships, committed capital, and investment strategies for this service

D) Seek industry input on potential future FAA-funded activities

The FAA will use the information from vendor responses to assist in determining any future phases of market investigation and engagement. The FAA does not commit to an acquisition with this RFI.

IV. ATTACHMENTS

A) Concept of Operations (CONOPS) for Oceanic Air Traffic Control Using SBA

B) Notional Surveillance Broadcast Services (SBS) Oceanic Requirements

V. REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI)

The FAA requests industry responses to the items below in order to understand the technical design and capabilities, cost, schedule, and investment strategy of the vendors’ applicable service. There are also requests for information on the vendors’ ability to provide optional services and ideas for an FAA-funded partnership.

1) Technical

This section covers the technical aspects of the SBA service, including requirements, architecture, challenges, and service maturity.

A) Requirements

SBA will be used in FAA-managed oceanic airspace regions and must meet the requirements necessary to provide separation services in that airspace. These requirements are provided in the Notional SBS Oceanic Requirements document, Attachment B.

The FAA requests responses or questions relating to the following:

1) Detail how your service would meet the functional and performance requirements in Attachment B, Section 6 and 7, respectively. Also identify requirements it would not satisfy.

2) Describe any plans for future service changes, including expansions, that would address any requirements that are not satisfied.

3) Detail system detection capabilities for rockets and supersonic aircraft, including:

a. The vertical detection limitations of your satellite constellation.

b. How much Doppler shift your receiver can tolerate (i.e., are there relative velocities that would impact the ability of your receiver to detect a given high-speed vehicle).

4) Provide any performance model estimates or data analysis results that support your performance requirements assessment. If data from your service is available for FAA analysis, please provide a data sample and a guide to interpreting it.

5) Explain what maintenance and monitoring is performed by your service and what reports would be provided to convey that information to FAA systems, per Attachment B, Section 6.1.2.3.

6) Identify any requirements beyond those in Attachment B that you would recommend as improvements, along with the justification and how they would support the CONOPS in Attachment A.

7) Provide a description of your service’s ability to support 978 MHz Universal Access Transceivers.

B) Architecture

The FAA would like to understand your SBA service architecture, how requirements are allocated across the architecture, and how the service would securely provide data to FAA systems.

The FAA requests responses or questions relating to the following:

1) Describe your SBA service architecture, including subsystems and interfaces, with an emphasis on the interface to the FAA’s Service Delivery Point (SDP) .

2) Explain any use of existing commercial or Government infrastructure.

3) Detail how the satellite constellation would provide sufficient continuous coverage, including percentage of coverage details along with redundancies and gaps.

a. Include constellation descriptions such as the estimated number of satellites, number of orbital planes, number of satellites per orbital plane, and number of spares or other redundancy measures, if applicable.

b. If possible, also include orbital characteristics like the Keplerian elements of the satellites (e.g., the parameters contained within two-line elements).

4) Describe the functionality of your subsystems and detail how requirements would be allocated across your architecture.

5) Describe how your architecture will meet security requirements for a High Impact system categorization, per Attachment B, Section 6.3.

a. Include details on the security associated with delivering SBA data to the FAA, per Attachment B, Sections 6.1.3 and 6.2.

6) Discuss how independent validation is performed relative to your service architecture, per Attachment B, Sections 6.1.2.2 and 7.2.5.

C) Challenges

There are challenges inherent in SBA. The FAA would like to know how your SBA service will respond to those challenges and if you can offer innovative ideas related to the challenges.

The FAA requests responses or questions relating to the following:

1) Describe your approach for how you would respond to each of the challenges detailed in Attachment B, Section 5.

2) Discuss any additional challenges that are not identified in Attachment B, Section 5, and the approach to address them.

D) Service Readiness

The FAA seeks an assessment of the readiness level of your SBA service.

The FAA requests responses or questions relating to the following:

1) Describe the Technology Readiness Level of your service, per guidance from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) , relative to the requirements detailed in Attachment B.

2) Optional Service Capabilities

The FAA is interested in the extent to which a vendor can provide additional capabilities that may provide operational value to U.S. oceanic and remote domestic air traffic services, in addition to the minimum required terrestrial ADS-B service. This section identifies an opportunity the FAA is considering. Information provided on any, all, or other capabilities not listed here is at the vendor’s discretion.

A) The FAA requests responses or questions relating to the relay of Very High Frequency (VHF) communication via satellite as follows:

1) Provide a description of the architecture the vendor would use to make the service available to the FAA.

a. Explain the expected coverage footprint for this service. (Note: terrestrial radio antennas typically have a 250 nautical mile (NM) footprint radius.)

2) Describe whether the analog VHF signal is transported as-is or converted to digital for transport and converted back to analog at the Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP).

3) Identify where the ground stations are located along with how many are needed to provide a robust service in FAA-managed oceanic airspace.

4) Explain any security and privacy controls applied to the signal processing and transport.

5) Discuss if frequencies other than VHF are permissible.

6) Describe if there would be a fee to users. If so, explain how users would pay for this service (e.g., part of their SBA subscription, additional user fees, or FAA-funded).

B) Provide a brief concept of operations illustrating how the VHF service would work for ATC services to include the following:

1) Identify the intended frequency allocation that would avoid spectrum congestion from terrestrial frequency interference.

2) Explain how much latency is expected between the aircraft and ATC.

3) Discuss what determines which satellite within the ANSPs service volume receives/forwards the VHF signal.

4) Explain how aircraft would receive communication hand-offs to surrounding ANSPs using VHF or another modality.

5) Describe how the service will handle the challenge of satellites moving through the service volumes.

3. Cost

A) Cost to FAA

The FAA seeks to understand the costs associated with your technical solution. The costs will be assessed against benefits in a potential future investment, and should address the following:

1) Provide the costs that the FAA will be required to pay for service establishment.

2) Provide the costs that the FAA would be required to pay for recurring charges, including:

a. Data transmission

b. Infrastructure support

c. Ongoing operational/maintenance costs

3) Describe the pricing structure (e.g., cost/flight hour, data licensing).

4) Explain what services can be delivered for $10 million – $20 million per year.

5) Explain what services can be delivered for $20 million – $30 million per year.

6) Explain what funding level would be needed, if $10 million – $30 million per year is not enough to support FAA requirements.

B) Partnerships and Investments

The FAA seeks to understand the investment maturity of a vendor’s SBA service. Responses to the topics below will help the FAA understand your current commitments and future plans.

1) Provide the total costs for full satellite constellation launch and operational establishment.

a. Identify the amount of equity capital and debt capital your organization and partners have secured or committed specifically for your SBA service.

b. Describe your strategy for securing remaining equity and/or debt capital for your SBA service.

2) Describe any agreements or partnerships with organizations or ANSPs regarding your SBA service.

4. Schedule

The FAA seeks to understand the schedule associated with your technical solution and requests responses or questions relating to the following:

A) Provide the development timeline.

B) Provide the detailed launch schedule.

1) Describe when the full satellite constellation will be in place.

C) Provide the operational schedule for various proposed services.

5. FAA Funded Partnership

The FAA is considering funded partnerships in the future and requests responses or questions to the following:

A) Explain what you believe should, or should not, be included in the FAA-funded activity framework.

B) Describe the timeline/duration that will be necessary for the FAA-funded activity.

C) Provide your recommended funding level to enable an accurate and credible FAA-funded assessment.

D) Identify any sensitivities you have with respect to data, service provision, or infrastructure.

VI. RFI SUBMISSION INFORMATION

A. Questions

Any questions regarding this RFI must be submitted in writing by close of business on April 21, 2023. Please send question(s) to Phillip Moyers, FAA Contracting Officer, at Phillip.L.Moyers@faa.gov, and Nathan Laycook, FAA Contracts Specialist, at Nathan.L.Laycook@faa.gov. Respondents must identify any proprietary questions and be prepared to provide justification to the FAA of such designations if requested. The FAA may, in its discretion, provide public answers to non-proprietary questions received. If the vendor marks a question as proprietary, but the FAA concludes the question is non-proprietary, the FAA will offer the vendor an opportunity to withdraw the question so the question will not be treated as non-proprietary. If the vendor chooses not to withdraw the deemed non-proprietary question, the FAA will treat the question as non-proprietary. The FAA may provide answers on or before April 21, 2023, or during the SBA General Information Session and Vendor One-on-One Sessions to be conducted between May 8, 2023 and May 12, 2023. Non-proprietary questions may, at the FAA’s discretion, be shared at the General Information Session.

If you wish to participate in the General Information Session, please contact Phillip Moyers, FAA Contracting Officer, at Phillip.L.Moyers@faa.gov, and Nathan Laycook, FAA Contracts Specialist, at Nathan.L.Laycook@faa.gov by April 21, 2023.

Additionally, if you wish to participate in a Vendor One-on-One Session, please contact Phillip Moyers, FAA Contracting Officer, at Phillip.L.Moyers@faa.gov, and Nathan Laycook, FAA Contracts Specialist, at Nathan.L.Laycook@faa.gov by April 21, 2023. Please note that participation in a Vendor One-on-One Session is at the discretion of the FAA and will be based on FAA personnel availability and need.

B. Format

All submittals must be provided in PDF format and are limited to 50 pages of text, charts, pictures, and graphs. Each page shall be laid out with 1” margins with a text size no smaller than 12 point. Titles must not exceed 14 point font size. Tables, charts, graphics, and figures must not use font sizes smaller than 8 point. The Government is interested in feedback from industry on any of the topics within this RFI.

C. Deadline for Responses

Responses must be received by 5:30 p.m. EDT on Friday, May 26, 2023. All responses to this RFI must be in writing. No oral responses will be accepted.

D. Email Addresses for Submission: Respondents must submit responses to Phillip Moyers, FAA Contracting Officer at Phillip.L.Moyers@faa.gov, and Nathan Laycook, FAA Contracts Specialist, at Nathan.L.Laycook@faa.gov.

The FAA may hold conversations, as needed, with respondents to clarify any technical or interpretive questions regarding the RFI. The FAA may hold additional industry one-on-one sessions following the assessment of responses.

Clarification Information: 5/11/2023

1. Clarifying information:
   
   
   
   
   1. Additional Security requirements may be required on ground stations in foreign countries and those requirements will need to be developed in the future.
   
   
   2. FAA would like SBA service to meet performance requirements in all specified service volumes, but if a vendor cannot meet this performance, provide where the performance may and may not be met.
   
   
   3. Attachment B, Appendix A provides dimensions for the service volumes but did not provide the floor and ceiling. The minimum requirement is for altitudes from FL055 to FL600 (5,500 feet - 60,000 feet).
   
   
   4. No new equipage requirements or mandates are anticipated. The FAA does not intend to provide equipage information as part of this RFI.
   
   
   5. The 50-page count limit excludes responses to the following sections: V.1.A.4 (performance model estimates or data analysis results or data sample), V.2 (Optional Service Capabilities), V.3 (Cost), V.4 (Schedule).
   
   
   
   


2. Information to email (via email only) to vendors who participated in General Informational Session and One-On-Ones, and submit a request for information:
   
   
   
   1. General Information Session briefing
   
   
   
   

END OF ANNOUNCEMENT

Attachments/Links