We address a significant challenge – spectral efficiency. It’s becoming increasingly clear that whoever controls the spectrum will control the battlespace. Astrapi’s capabilities help to achieve that critical advantage. - Jerrold Prothero, Ph.D., CEO
DALLAS (PRWEB) January 24, 2022
Astrapi Corporation has been awarded its second Phase II SBIR contract from the United States Air Force AFWERX program. The new contract provides support for Astrapi to deliver a Software Defined Radio (SDR) prototype. The SDR will implement Astrapi’s advanced communication capability – Spiral Modulation. Spiral modulation addresses congested and contested communication channels by enabling Warfighters to get more information through a channel using less signal power.
Astrapi continues to make foundational improvements at the core physical layer of the communications stack. This project is complementary to another Phase II SBIR project focused on Symbol Waveform Hopping (SWH), funded with support from the U.S. Space Force. SWH provides a unique way to secure signal transmission. Astrapi is currently working with a SDR hardware partner to demonstrate Spiral Modulation in a Ka-band radio that is radiation hardened and suitable for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) deployment. The miniaturized radio will have on-orbit signal processing capabilities and will be suitable for LEO, MEO and GEO.
“We are quite excited to advance this application of Spiral Modulation toward deployment,” stated Dr. Jerrold Prothero, Founder and CEO of Astrapi Corporation. “We have a strong, accomplished teaming partner in Space Micro. And we address a significant challenge – spectral efficiency. It’s becoming increasingly clear that whoever controls the spectrum will control the battlespace. Astrapi’s capabilities help to achieve that critical advantage.”
Based on a new generalization of Euler’s formula, the foundational mathematics for the telecommunications industry, Astrapi has the ability to engineer signals as the sum of complex spirals. This unleashes, for the first time, the ability to fully exploit the capabilities of a continuously non-stationary spectrum. Classical channel capacity theory contains, in the proof of the sampling theorem, an implicit assumption that the spectrum is at least approximately stationary. By violating this assumption, Spiral Modulation creates the opportunity to bypass the Shannon-Hartley law, the previous upper limit for spectral efficiency.
ABOUT Astrapi Corporation
Astrapi provides fundamentally new ways to optimize the use of the spectrum, to secure signal transmission, and to measure power in a non-stationary spectrum. Astrapi is able to improve the trade-off between the four fundamental parameters in telecommunications: bandwidth, signal power, data throughput, and error rate. The resulting efficiency translates into higher spectral performance with more bits available at a lower cost. Currently Astrapi has fifteen US patents issued, with more pending and with corresponding international patent coverage. Further information at http://www.astrapi-corp.com
ABOUT SPACE MICRO
Space Micro Inc., based in San Diego, CA, is an engineering-driven supplier of affordable, high-performance, radiation-hardened communications, electro-optics, and digital systems for use in commercial, civil, and military space applications around the world. Space Micro solutions include Telemetry, Tracking and Command (TT&C) transmitters, mission data transmitters, space cameras, star trackers, image processors, Command & Data Handling (C&DH) systems and laser communications systems.
For more information, visit spacemicro.com or contact Michael Dowd, Vice President of Business Development at (858) 332-0700, extension 122 or via email at mdowd@spacemicro.co
ABOUT AFWERX
AFRL and AFWERX have partnered to streamline the Small Business Innovation Research process in an attempt to speed up the experience, broaden the pool of potential applicants and decrease bureaucratic overhead. Beginning in SBIR 18.2, and now in 21.1, the Air Force has begun offering 'The Open Topic' SBIR/STTR program that is faster, leaner and open to a broader range of innovations.