Concept exploration phase III results for the Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) requirements

The Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) is the Department of Defense's next-generation narrowband communications satellite system. Contracts with several industry teams have been completed for three phases of concept exploration studies regarding communication system concepts and preliminary architectures, cost-performance tradeoffs, and technical assessments of high-risk areas. Specifically, concept exploration phase III focused on technical assessments and demonstrations of certain high-risk aspects of the teams' architectures, such as interoperability with the legacy system, payload and antenna design, waveform design, and link and capacity analysis. The results of these analyses and demonstrations have provided valuable insight into the level of risk related to general MUOS requirements and to specific architectures. The paper presents the results of studies specifically focused on transition from the legacy system, geolocation and interference mitigation, payload technology development, and a UHF link simulator.