SOURCES SOUGHT
D -- Electromagnetic Propagation Integrated Resource Environment (EMPIRE) Sustainment and EnhancementN
- Notice Date
- 5/30/2007
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- NAICS
- 541330
— Engineering Services
- Contracting Office
- Department of the Air Force, Air Combat Command, HQ AIA, HQ AIA/LGCK 102 Hall Blvd, Ste 258, San Antonio, TX, 78243-7030, UNITED STATES
- ZIP Code
- 00000
- Solicitation Number
- Reference-Number-EMPIRE
- Response Due
- 6/14/2007
- Archive Date
- 6/29/2007
- Description
- The 453rd Electronic Warfare Squadron (453 EWS), a component of the Air Force Information Operations Center (AFIOC) is currently seeking sources for a potential requirement for sustainment and enhancement of the Electromagnetic Propagation Integrated Resource Environment (EMPIRE). The requirement will provide support to the Electronic Warfare Analysis (EWA) flight and the Department of Defense?s (DOD) EMPIRE user community with basic phenomenology research & documentation, software development, sustainment and enhancement, Analysis, Modeling & Simulation support in the inter-related areas of electromagnetic (EM) propagation, antennas, meteorology & oceanography (MetOc), and geo-environmental sciences. This is a Sources Sought Synopsis only. This is not a solicitation announcement. This synopsis neither constitutes a Request for Proposal, nor does it restrict the 453 EWS to an ultimate acquisition approach. No contract will be awarded from this announcement and requests for a solicitation will not receive a response. No reimbursement will be made for any costs associated with providing information in response to this announcement. Any information submitted by respondents to this synopsis is strictly voluntary. This Sources Sought Synopsis is in support of a market survey being conducted by the 453 EWS to determine potential sources capable of fulfilling all requirements associated with supporting the sustainment and enhancement of EMPIRE. Any resultant contract is anticipated to be a five (5) year indefinite quantity / indefinite delivery, cost plus fixed fee type of contract. Firms responding to this sources sought synopsis are also requested to provide the 453 EWS with relevant experience related to all requirements and knowledge areas included in this Sources Sought Synopsis. Responses must be submitted electronically to Bill Kaufman, Contracting Officer at William.kaufman@lackland.af.mil by 2:00 p.m. Central Daylight Time on 14 Jun 07. In the event that electronic submission is not possible, responses can be forwarded in hard copy to the following address: AF ISR Agency /A7KA, Attn: Bill Kaufman, 102 Hall Blvd, Ste 268, San Antonio, TX 78243. If responses are mailed, they must be received by 14 Jun 07. No phone calls will be accepted. BACKGROUND: The Electromagnetic Integrated Resource Environment (EMPIRE) is an outgrowth of efforts begun in 1997 by the University of Texas; Applied Research Laboratory (UT-ARL) to provide a consistent, single application programming interface (API) between a number of electromagnetic propagation models, algorithms, & data sources & the Naval Information Operations Center?s (NIOC) ?Radio Frequency Mission Planner? (RFMP), a Tactical Decision Aid (TDA, also know as a model, or analytical tool) used to study & evaluate the performance of Command, Control Communications Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance (C3ISR) & Electronic Warfare (EW) systems in real world operational environments. EMPIRE uses a mix of C/C++, JAVA, and XML to ?wrap? existing propagation models written in a wide variety of computer languages (C, C++. FORTRAN, ADA). More information on EMPIRE can be obtained by contacting the Naval Information Operations Command (NIOC) at the following Lieutenant Commander Frederick M Sant (santfre@niwa.navy.mil, 301-669-2358) Naval Information Operations Command-Suitland 9800 Savage Road Fort George G. Meade, MD 20755-6000 GENERAL TASKS: 1. TDA Runtime & Interfacing Optimization Support: The contractor shall assist TDA developers with enhancing the execution runtime of their particular TDAs when using the EMPIRE software suite. Typically this class of support might include application programming interface (API) enhancements / adaptations; modifications to EMPIRE's internal structures and self contained interfaces; & advice on improved means of interfacing the subject TDA with EMPIRE. 2. TDA Verification & Validation Support: The contractor shall verify and validate the performance of the task sponsor identified TDA to ensure the accuracy of the TDA's analytical results. Typical tasks may include participation in field measurement campaigns, to include test planning, range scheduling, test execution, data collection, reduction & analysis, comparison of field measurements to TDA generated analysis results; comparisons of TDA-generated results to those produced by standalone EMPIRE or standalone propagation models; TDA software design reviews as described in the Joint Accreditation Support Activity?s (JASA) Accreditation Support Plans (ASP) and developing and presenting technical papers at professional conferences (IEEE, AOC, etc.) seeking peer review and concurrence/approval & support for analytical approaches & methodologies. 3. Electromagnetic Propagation Modeling Support: The contractor shall update and/or repair defects in the existing component propagation algorithms, models, and data sources contained in EMPIRE, integrate existing propagation algorithms, models and data sources not currently contained in EMPIRE, and develop and integrate new electromagnetic propagation algorithms, models and data sources (hereafter called modified capabilities). The contractor will produce unit, integration, regression &/or functional test cases for the modified capabilities, and add them to the EMPIRE test case suite. The contractor shall execute these test cases, and report findings in a technical memorandum to be added to the EMPIRE software test report (STP). The contractor will revise and / or update EMPIRE?s model recommendation rule set to reflect any changes brought about by the propagation model updates. Working in conjunction with the task sponsor, the contractor will demonstrate successful implementation of the updated propagation models. Descriptions of model updates, enhancements, results of unit, integration, regression & functional testing as well as changes to the component model?s documentation suite will be incorporated into the EMPIRE documentation suite. 4. Antenna Modeling Support: The contractor shall model assorted antennas & related components for use in EMPIRE; including the generation of antenna pattern data delivered in a task sponsor defined format; the documentation of the processes & tools used to generate antenna pattern data; the interfacing/integration of antenna modeling libraries & data generation tools such as the Antenna Integrated Resource Environment (AIRE) with EMPIRE; the enhancement of AIRE to include new antenna classes (types); the development of new antenna modeling tools and analytical algorithms, or other efforts that affect how EMPIRE and its using TDAs handle antennas. 5. Analysis Algorithms & Performance Metrics Development: The contractor shall perform research, development, design & implementation of new analysis algorithms & performance metrics for the TDAs identified by the task sponsor. Example of tasks might include the development of algorithms to perform mixed Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA) & Frequency Difference of Arrival (FDOA) for fixed, ground mobile, Ship borne & Airborne signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection systems; the development of algorithms and performance metrics for Passive Coherent Detection and Location, or the development of EM propagation measures of merit (MOM), measures of performance (MOP), & measures of effectiveness (MOE), (e.g., Lott Plots, Probability of Signal Acquisition, etc.). 6. Development of Specially Structured EMPIRE Versions: The contractor shall produce specially formatted & structured version of EMPIRE to meet task sponsor needs. For example, this might be the development of a version of EMPIRE that might be releasable to foreign nations, or to the commercial market, or the development of a services oriented architecture (SOA) version of EMPIRE. 7. Commercial Capabilities Integration: The contractor shall integrate selected commercially available EM propagation & related products that have an existing API. Such products may include ?Wireless InSite?, ?XFDTD?, & ?XGTD? amongst others into EMPIRE. 8. Meteorological & Oceanographic Modeling: The contractor shall perform phenomenology investigation & documentation of findings, software development, & testing, integration of capabilities to use meteorological & oceanographic (MetOc) models, algorithms, & data in the computation of electromagnetic propagation effects. These efforts might include enhancement of the capability in EMPIRE to directly read data from DoD MetOc data sources using the Joint MetOc broker language (JMBL), or modifying the climatological capabilities in EMPIRE to recover ducting condition information, or implementing the capability to read data directly from MetOc soundings or the Integrated Broadcast System-Network (IBS-N) real-time intelligence broadcast system. Other tasks may include developing the ability to handle large MetOc datasets or allow for various interpolations between data points. 9. Geo-Environmental Modeling: The contractor shall perform phenomenology investigation, software development, & testing, integration of capabilities to use geo-environmental models, algorithms, & data sources within EMPIRE. Such tasks may involve, but not be limited to enhancement & updating dielectric constant databases & modeling capabilities, studying the effects of mixed resolution digital terrain data on EM propagation modeling results, studying & modeling the effects of natural & man-made obscurants / aerosols, (i.e. snow, sleet, rain, smoke, fog, foliage, etc.) on RF signal propagation, development of the capability to model natural & man-made radio frequency noise, in a variety of operationally relevant setting from rural to urban environments, and studying & implementing the capabilities to model the effects of the Earth?s magnetic fields on Electromagnetic propagation. 10. Specialized Hardware & Software Development: Development of hardware & software-based processing acceleration techniques to include the use of commercial video graphics cards, graphics processing units (GPUs), & specialized digital signal processing chips & circuit cards, field programmable gate arrays, array processors, & computer clusters built using commercial gaming engines such as the SONY PS-2/PS-3 family, or other related combinations of hardware & software. CONTRACTOR QUALIFICATION REQUIREMENTS: Contractor expertise must include: ? Software development and project management capabilities allowing maintenance & enhancement of EMPIRE in the following operating environments: o LINUX (Red Hat & Suse, with NSA Secure LINUX extensions) o UNIX (Solaris on Sun & X86 Hardware) o Windows (2000-to-Vista on X86 & compatible Hardware) with three API interfaces o XML (eclpsx) o JAVA o C++. Underlying code is written in and must be maintained in FORTRAN (currently 90,378 lines), C/C++ (currently 268,422 lines) and Perl (currently 15,000 lines). ? Software source code configuration control processes for development & re-integration while branched from master EMPIRE code base without additional costs to the 453rd EWS ? Capabilities to explore and apply advanced computational technologies such as graphical co-processors, DSP/FPGA/FFT chips & co-processing hardware, parallel computing systems such as blades, multi-core CPUs, compute clusters, and gridded computers, and services oriented architectures (SOA) to electromagnetic propagation modeling and TDA algorithm design. ? On staff expertise in prediction of radio propagation phenomenology with specific emphasis on: o Mathematical representation/modeling of radio propagation, and radio frequency systems and equipment (doctorate level); o Meteorological and oceanographic influences on radio propagation (refractive profiles, radiosonde data, rain, fog, temperature inversions, humidity, sea state, etc.) doctorate desired; o Geo-Environmental & Obscurant influence (terrain, buildings, foliage, aerosols, etc.), o Electromagnetic Noise, and the effects of geomagnetism o ground dielectrics o low frequency behavior (skywave, groundwave, Ionospheric effects, space weather, etc.) at least masters level
- Place of Performance
- Address: Contractor's Facility
- Zip Code: 78243
- Country: UNITED STATES
- Zip Code: 78243
- Record
- SN01305359-W 20070601/070530220624 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
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