Navy eyes software-defined radio to supplement or replace satellite communications
Posted by John Keller
ARLINGTON, Va., 13 Dec. 2009.Radio communications experts at the Raytheon Co. Command and Control Systems segment in Marlborough, Mass., are working out how to develop an open-architecture software defined radio (SDR) system to supplement or replace Navy satellite communications under terms of a $9.5 million research contract announced Friday.
The contract, awarded by the Office of Naval Research in Arlington, Va., is for SDR communications at RF frequencies of 2 GHz and above to improve Navy tactical data communications for mobile, high throughput networking for platform-to-platform military communications with or without the use of satellites.
This SDR research is part of the Navy's High Throughput Networking Infrastructure research initiative to enhance tactical communications among surface ships, aircraft, and ground sites for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance in case Navy communications by satellite are degraded or unavailable.
Raytheon engineers will investigate new modular software defined digital radio architectures to improve data link performance with high-throughput waveforms in all frequency bands with a common hardware and software design for ship, air, and ground communications.
Company military communications experts will develop libraries of core hardware and software modules that can be used in new applications without rewriting software code.
The software-defined radios that Raytheon will develop will be composed of separate analog RF and digital signal processing modules connected with open interfaces, such as Gigabit Ethernet, to operate at data as fast as 135 megabits per second not only for communications, but also for applications like radar and electronic warfare.
More information on this contract is available online at https://www.fbo.gov/spg/DON/ONR/ONR/Awards/N00014-10-D-0174.html
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