Phase II year
2021
(last award dollars: 1731503094)
Phase II Amount
$1,730,548
Squad-Level communications is a critically vulnerable link to electronic warfare (EW) attacks in Tactical Radio Networks. The current trend for communications in DoD is the adoption of commercial wireless waveforms (e.g., IEEE 802.11x, LTE) over existing tactical radios due their capacity to provides high bandwidth throughput and scalability. Tactical radio and commercial wireless networks do not provide electronic protection (EP) or resiliency against evolving and adaptive threats in the battlespace. LTE (Long-Term Evolution) waveforms are ideally suited for squad level communications in the form of Device-to-Device (D2D) communications. Traditionally, LTE networks require infrastructure to achieve network coverage between User Equipment (UE) devices. D2D LTE communications does not provide EP; therefore, a solution is required that combines high-speed bandwidth throughput, EP, and resiliency to operate in an Electronic Magnetic Operational Environment (EMOE) without LTE infrastructure. This proposal outlines an innovative approach to meet the LTE and EP requirements leveraging 3GPP Proximity Service (ProSe) coupled with an intelligent cognitive agent, power-efficiency, and jamming mitigation electronics in a lightweight form-factor for Dismounted Soldiers. This technical approach shall integrate open-source D2D software developed by the OpenAirInterface Consortium. The OpenAirInterfaceTM (OAI) consortium is dedicated to developing an open-source D2D system for Public Safety (DDPS) that demonstrates 3GPP Proximity Service (ProSe) for public safety (PS) applications. The core technologies delivered under the DDPS will serve as the foundational elements for layer 2 and above requirements for this proposed approach. Perspecta Labs, a leading research organization on this topic and founding member of OAI. Perspecta labs conducted a two-year development program in collaboration with EURECOM. The results of that work produced DDPS ProSe software adopted and enhanced OAIs standards-compliant implementation on Ettus Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) Software Defined Radio (SDR)-based platforms. The key DDPS technologies include building a complete ProSe stack for Mission Critical Voice, using the LTE Sidelink (PC5) interface based on the Rel-14 3GPP specifications. The D2D stack is intended to create interested amongst vendors for commercialization on a system-on-a-chip platform. TCI plans to pursue a D2D design architecture for squad-level communication for this program to a develop FPGA system-on-a-chip (SOC).
