SBIR-STTR Award

With the advent of satellite telephone services, it is now feasible to provide secure voice communication for government or commercial applications to any location on Earth. Black & Ryan Engineering (BRE) proposes an SBIR project to implement a Voice Authenticated Wireless Communication System (VAWCS) on an existing satellite-based voice communication platform. In Phase I, BRE will develop a computer model of the existing platform's wireless channel and add a Vocoder, Public Key Encryption, FEC Error Protection and Speaker Authentication. The Vocoder will mathematically compress the real-time speech to suit the narrowband wireless channel. The Encryption will provide secure communication of the compressed speech data while the Encryption's Digital Signature function and Speaker Authentication will jointly assure the users that they are not communicating with an impostor. FEC Error Protection will reduce the effect of noise in the wireless channel so that the other components can perform properly. This model will be exercised to characterize how channel errors reduce system performance, which will drive system modifications for better performance. Phase II will involve implementing these additional components on the existing satellite-based voice communication platform and validating performance for various geo-locations.

With the advent of satellite telephone services, it is now feasible to provide secure voice communication to any location on Earth. In a Phase I SBIR for AFRL, Black & Ryan Engineering (BRE) developed VAWCS (Voice Authenticated Wireless Communication System), a computer model of a Communications Waveform, combining Voice Authentication, Speech Compression, Encryption, and Forward Error Correction for narrowband wireless communication over a SATCOM Channel. BRE now proposes a Phase II SBIR project to: · Formally specify and initially implement a new adaptive packetization protocol called SWAP (Secure Wireless Adaptive Protocol) designed to: A. Enhance the flexibility of VAWCS, allowing users to selectively specify features for flexible communication, and B. Serve as a generalized adaptive communication framework for the Air Force's Joint Battlespace Infosphere (JBI) Program. · Implement the VAWCS Waveform Model on Motorola's Software Defined Radio / Wireless Information Transfer (SDR / WITS) platform, using the WITS 4800 Baud satellite communications (SATCOM) Radio Waveform Data Mode. BRE will: 1. Develop streaming data CORBA interfaces between VAWCS components, 2. Port the VAWCS model to the WITS platform, 3. Integrate an initial implementation of the SWAP Protocol for VAWCS, and 4. Test the system in the presence of simulated/real background and channel noise.

Benefits:
Secure voice wire-line communication has been available to the military and to some commercial users for years. Secure voice for wireless communication is clearly desirable to extend the geo-locations available to these users and to expand the market generally. Since wireless communication is growing rapidly and wireless channels are much easier to tap into than are wire-line channels, there will be a growing need for more security, including end-to-end encryption on all wireless channels. Every time a person gives their Social Security Number or their credit card number over a Cellular Telephone connection today, they risk fraudulent theft of this valuable information. In addition to end-to-end encryption for wireless communication links, a reliable way to authenticate the identity of the person using the secure telephone is important for many applications. Authorizing a military action over a secure telephone is an obvious example of a situation where it would be extremely valuable to know that the telephone users are exactly who they claim to be. As we continue to become an information-based society, the security of that information and the authentication of its source will continue to become more important. Black & Ryan Engineering (BRE) has been involved with Motorola in the development of the basic technologies that can now be put together to provide secure, authenticated voice communication for anyone in any corner of the world. BRE developed the VAWCS (Voice Authenticated Wireless Communication System) computer model in Phase I that will be implemented in Phase II on Motorola's Software Defined Radio / Wireless Information Transfer (SDR/WITS) platform. The military has additional needs that the VAWCS architecture can be extended and generalized to address. A new military initiative, the Joint Battlespace Infosphere (JBI), is intended to provide the U.S. Air Force an "integrated, predominantly space-based, operational command-and-control system for the 21st century". It will serve as an "integrating substrate upon which existing and emerging systems will be linked together to support transparent information exchange across a full spectrum of mission activities". BRE proposes a new communications architecture built around an adaptive packetization protocol called SWAPTM (Secure Wireless Adaptive Protocol) and associated SWAP components that will: a) Complement and enhance the VAWCS implementation, and b) Provide a framework for implementing JBI.