TFWireless Inc is a new technology startup solely established to commercialize the physical layer (PHY) rateless codec technology for both space communication and terrestrial wireless networks. The mission of the tech startup is to develop transformative wireless communications technology which provides excellent performance enhancements and dramatic cost savings offering key benefits in terms of latency or processing speeds and power/energy consumption. PHY rateless codec technology is a forward error correction (FEC) or channel coding and Automatic repeat request (ARQ) technology for the reliable transmission of information bits between the transmitter and receiver in a wireless environment. An initial form of the technology was developed by the founder at NASA JPL, which is part of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). TFWireless will be further developing the technology through the execution of NSF SBIR/STTR projects in phases. NASA JPL is interested in the wireless communications technology developed by TFWireless and expressed support as a strategic partner for the SBIR Phase I and Phase II projects. Caltech will be the research institution (RI) partner of TFWireless Inc for the NSF STTR Phase I project. Dr. Dariush Divsalar from NASA JPL and Prof. Babak Hassibi from Caltech will be working with the founder on the NSF STTR Phase I project. The communications technology is applicable to inter-satellite links, satellite-to-ground, and ground-to-satellite links. Lockheed Martin's (LM) space business program is a vendor of commercial and government satellites. LM space business can be the biggest customer of TFWireless Inc. Government customers can include NASA, SDA (Pentagon). Commercial customers can include Amazon's Project Kuiper, SpaceX Starlink, and Kepler Communications. Typical use cases of the technology outside of the satellite market include NASA proximity link orbiters, landers, and rovers.
