NASA SBIR 2012 Solicitation

SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (Firm Name, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
QorTek Inc
1965 Lycoming Creek Road, Suite 205
Williamsport, PA 17701 - 1251
(570) 322-2700

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Gareth J Knowles
gknowles@qortek.com
1965 Lycoming Creek Road, Suite 205
Williamsport, PA 17701 - 1251
(570) 322-2700

CORPORATE/BUSINESS OFFICIAL (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Cathy A Bower
cbrooke@qortek.com
1965 Lycoming Creek Road, Suite 205
Williamsport, PA 17701 - 1251
(570) 322-2700

Estimated Technology Readiness Level (TRL) at beginning and end of contract:
Begin: 3
End: 5

Technology Available (TAV) Subtopics
Power Electronics and Management, and Energy Storage is a Technology Available (TAV) subtopic that includes NASA Intellectual Property (IP). Do you plan to use the NASA IP under the award?
No

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (Limit 2000 characters, approximately 200 words)
The program will leverage recent advances in striction materials and coupled striction devices as to enable highly isolated (analog) voltage and current flow sensors very suitable for harsh space environment power monitoring. Exhibiting negligible electromagnetic disturbance coupling and electromagnetic emission, these non-photonic striction based power flow monitoring introduces decided advantages of eliminating magnetics, processors, degradation and 'latch-up'. These units are simpler and lower cost to manufacture than photonic or capacitive coupled methods of measurement and possessing and furthermore provide far greater (galvanic) isolation capability than is presently achievable. Moreover they can safely/reliably operate over a wide temperature range to as low as cryogenic. The innovation eliminates the present need for separate isolation and gain stages as these are now accomplished in a single step as to reduce design complexity and risk. The effort is to show that these new striction power flow monitoring capabilities can measure power characteristics over wide bandwidth to DC and are highly suitable for widespread NASA use in wide temperature range and high radiation environments. The proposed modular design will be easy to install and reduces the spares requirements.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
Power flow monitoring is pervasive and essential across all NASA platforms and subsystems, but the highest pay-off of the new technology innovation will be to NASA missions that need to operate in harsh exposure missions requiring high temperature (extreme cold or extreme hot) and radiation tolerance. Addressing first three specifically identified goals on the NASA rad-hard electronics target list the technology promises to have high impact to unmanned missions and robotic systems with large potential impact for Heliophysics, Mars, and Earth Sciences missions, and possible Jupiter and Venus exploratory missions all of which require all of their on-board electronics and sensor equipment to operate under increasingly tough conditions. NASA specific needs especially unheated electronics and future science payload development initiatives for which this technology could be applied including: Deep Space; Jupiter Europa Orbiter (JEO) flagship; Venus surface exploration; and exploration of the dark lunar polar craters.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
There is a wide range for current and (linear) voltage-monitoring application needs across the entire spectrum of space mission requirements and space platform equipment including particle measurement, solar observation, etc. Potential customers include Air Force Space Command, MDA, and NRO where the proposed technology can be immediately applied to surveillance, reconnaissance, communications, navigation, and missile warning. The US Army and major SDR vendors are customers for the proposed advanced power monitoring technology as it will be directly applicable to satellite systems, missile systems, UAV/UUAV, underwater and integrated electronics. A large near-term market is represented by expanding the technology for replacement gate drives in a wide range of switchmode power supplies for military, NASA and commercial users of power equipment or data transfer equipment. A host of medical applications for the electrostriction voltage isolators includes medical equipment Microwave therapy, Patient monitoring, Electrocardiographs, and Defibrillators.

TECHNOLOGY TAXONOMY MAPPING (NASA's technology taxonomy has been developed by the SBIR-STTR program to disseminate awareness of proposed and awarded R/R&D in the agency. It is a listing of over 100 technologies, sorted into broad categories, of interest to NASA.)

Amplifiers/Repeaters/Translators Avionics (see also Control and Monitoring) Circuits (including ICs; for specific applications, see e.g., Communications, Networking & Signal Transport; Control & Monitoring, Sensors) Diagnostics/Prognostics Distribution/Management Electromagnetic Models & Simulations (see also Testing & Evaluation) Prototyping Smart/Multifunctional Materials Spacecraft Instrumentation & Astrionics (see also Communications; Control & Monitoring; Information Systems)