ROME, N.Y. – U.S. Air Force researchers are asking industry for new ways to design cognitive radio waveform generation and network control to enable RF communications that are fast, efficient, and able to adapt to environmental conditions.
Officials of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate in Rome, N.Y., re-issued a broad agency announcement in late September (FA8750-22-S-7006) for the Adaptive Waveform Generation for Extreme RF (AWGER) project.
The program seeks new kinds of cognitive radio techniques that enable wireless communications that autonomously find open radio frequencies and choose the most efficient RF waveform to avoid interference, achieve necessary range, and send data quickly.
Intelligent RF transceivers
Cognitive radio describes an RF transceiver that intelligently can detect which communication channels are in use, which ones are not, and instantly move into vacant channels. The same principles could apply to radar, electronic warfare (EW) and other RF and microwave applications.
The AWGER program aims at effective design tradeoffs between RF spectral efficiency, linearity, and power efficiency. One of the major issues in cognitive radio is obtaining an adaptive transmitting waveform based on environmental measurements.
The Air Force Research Laboratory is soliciting white papers that describe technologies for cognitive waveform generation; machine learning or other cognitive techniques for building waveforms from fundamental digital processing blocks; adjusting to waveforms based on varying RF environments and interference; simulate RF environments and physical layers for waveform evaluation; and resiliency to adversarial attacks.
Tell me more about military cognitive radio ...
- Military cognitive radio is a type of software-defined radio that can detect and adapt to different communications environments automatically -- especially when the electromagnetic spectrum is congested or contested. It uses dynamic spectrum access; self-organizing networks; interference mitigation; adaptive modulation and coding; security and anti-jamming; and interoperability among different branches of the military. Cognitive technologies are valuable for tactical communications; electronic warfare; unmanned vehicles; command and control; and cooperative tactical networks.
The project also explores new kinds of RF network control through network throughput analysis and control within varying RF environments; coordinating and handshaking of physical layer changes between nodes in a network; and network layer simulation and network control evaluation.
Finally, the AWGER project seeks to create a unified scenario evaluation environment with over-the-air demonstrations consisting of virtual nodes from emulation and physical nodes; and integrated demonstration of network control and waveform generation. The AWGER project should be worth nearly $50 million through 2027, split among several different contractors.
Companies interested should email white papers to the Air Force's Gerald Wohlrab by 15 Sept. 2026 at [email protected]. Email technical questions or concerns to the Air Force's Gerald Wohlrab at [email protected], and business questions to Amber Buckley at [email protected]. More information is online at https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/78c6cc9659774f40a64a528f641571a6/view.
