SBIR-STTR Award

DataSoft leverages its considerable military and commercial SDR experience to determine the desired ASR capabilities and critical enabling technologies, including SDR and CR technologies, which are essential to developing the ASR. Any gaps in technology are identified, and target requirements for the ASR are captured. DataSoft defines an ASR architecture that is both generic and versatile. It improves on several complex problems, including interoperability issues, by defining a fully reconfigurable radio using the latest digital and RF technologies to improve cost, size, power consumption and RF performance. Finally, DataSoft develops a Program Plan to design and build a feasible ASR prototype. The plan details multiple stages of rapid hardware development followed by circuit refinements and software integration efforts. The plan concludes with a final demonstration of the ASR prototype to all interested U.S. Government stakeholders.

Benefits:
DataSoft’s overall approach identifies technology advances and contrasts various ideas in order to develop the complete SDR-based ASR that incorporates innovative hardware components and demonstrates superior wideband operation with re-programmability for waveform processing and cognitive awareness of its RF environment. The DataSoft ASR architecture explores potential efficiencies across the entire transceiver and leverages our extensive, detailed military and commercial SDR platform design experience. DataSoft has successfully demonstrated its ability to build rapid hardware prototypes using a proven methodology. Our Program Plan to develop a feasible ASR prototype during Phase II saves time and money by producing early units for evaluation. Through repeated refinement, integration, and performance evaluation, the ASR architecture is developed and evaluated incrementally. The result is a final customer demonstration and a Program Plan for the high performance, reconfigurable ASR platform at the conclusion of Phase II.

Keywords:
Satellite communications, interoperability, software defined radios, cognitive radios, wideband RF, reconfigurable hardware, space communications, dynamic spectrum access, network protocol identification, spectrum management, frequency agility, spectrum mobility

Military satellite communications are key to achieving dominant maneuver on the future battlefield. It is critical to synchronize the movements and effects of widely dispersed and highly mobile units. Coupled with satellite navigation, commanders maintain precise data on the position and status of friendly forces and the enemy-fundamental to battlespace awareness. Space-based communications, surveillance, and resource monitoring capabilities enable Warfighters to complete the common operating picture of the battlefield. The specific goal of this Army Phase II SBIR is to integrate an Iridium modem with technologies developed thru SBIRs, projects, and IR&D (SideBridge and BlueLink.) The SideBridge-Iridium (SB-I) module will send and receive PLI using Short Burst Data (SBD) messages. SB-I will connect directly to the Rifleman Radio, detect the status and configuration of the radio network, and automatically send PLI through EMSS when radio(s) are out of network or fail to generate PLI. DataSofts Work Plan takes a practical approach to rapidly delivering product functionality. We have fully defined the activities required to attain each of the project objectives. DataSoft follows an iterative product development methodology to address the needs for early functionality and evaluation units for lab experiments and subsequent field test events. The SB-I units will have a modular design to support new radio and device connections with a minimum of device re-design. We envision the SB-I capability will likely expand beyond the Rifleman radio models as an area of future growth.