Perspecta Labs has secured a prime contract to design and develop a low-cost, resilient tactical radio communications solution for the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Work on the solution will be carried out as part of DARPA’s Resilient Networked Distributed Mosaic Communications (RN DMC) programme.
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With a performance period of over 45 months, the contract’s total value will be $18.5m if all options are used.
DARPA’s RN DMC programme aims to use self-forming, self-healing mosaic antennas for resilient, long-range tactical communications.
These antennas are built using small, low power and cost transceiver elements (tiles). Soldiers can easily carry them and host on ground vehicles, high-altitude platforms and satellites.
This low size and cost solution developed by Perspecta Labs uses wideband distributed spatial processing and a new mechanism for joint signal processing and networking.
The adaptive distributed array system solution prototype will be tested and evaluated with current tactical radios and unmodified tactical waveforms.
Perspecta Labs president Petros Mouchtaris said: “We are excited to design, develop and demonstrate low-cost, resilient long-range communications for challenging non-line-of-sight radio environments.
“With innovative use of tiles, our solution will deliver a high-performance tactical radio communications solution which is flexible, robust and has significantly lower risk of detection, interference and jamming.”
In November 2019, Perspecta Labs received a $6m award to develop and demonstrate an integrated network planner prototype (INPP) for the US Army.
