Solider radio waveform demonstrated on Raytheon air and ground radios

MARLBOROUGH, Mass., 1 Nov., 2012. Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) has demonstrated the soldier radio waveform (SRW), a mobile ad-hoc networking waveform, on its new class of airborne and ground radio terminals, providing soldiers with another way to communicate across networks. Users were able to send voice and data traffic between Raytheon's terminal and another soldier radio running SRW during the demonstration. Raytheon is moving through the Department of Defense's Joint Tactical Networking Center's (JTNC) certification process for waveform conformance, and the company plans to attend upcoming interoperability tests with the government. In addition to SRW, Raytheon's tactical radios already feature the next generation mobile ad hoc networking waveform (NMW), which is designed to run on lower cost, reduced size and lower power-consumption radios, while delivering wideband networking capability.

Raytheon's airborne radios are used on helicopters and unmanned aircraft. The ground radio system is called the mobile ad hoc interoperability network gateway (MAINGATE). It is meant for the U.S. Army's mid-tier network, a purpose for which it is under evaluation at this year's Network Integration Evaluation (NIE) at Fort Bliss, Texas. MAINGATE, with NMW, has been in operational use with deployed forces for more than two years.

Raytheon plans to leverage the SWR in its common radio architecture in the company's next generation ground and airborne radios, according to Raytheon officals.

The latest radios from Raytheon are capable of running narrowband and networking waveforms as well as the future mobile user objective system (MUOS) waveform from the JTNC library. Raytheon recently provided its NMW into this same repository to assist in interoperability with MAINGATE.