This SBIR Phase II project will demonstrate the functionality and interoperability of products recommended in our Phase I investigation, thereby validating their applicability and usefulness to the VIRGINIA ECS. We propose a testing and integration effort that will directly reduce risk to the VIRGINIA Class ECS as well as provide beneficial "lessons learned" for any future backfit installations of COTS radios on other classes of submarines. These activities would include simultaneous operation of diverse communications channels under varying operational scenarios. We will also gather data related to the reliability and ease of operation and maintenance of the tested equipment. Additionally, the work that we propose to accomplish under Phase II could be expanded beyond COTS radios to include integration of other associated COTS products.
Benefits: The immediate result of this Phase II SBIR activity will be the creation of a knowledge base that consists of performance metrics of COTS radios operating in a Submarine Communications environment. We will gather and analyze data related to the data transfer rates achievable over various RF Circuits. We will also identify equipment interface requirements, as well as interoperability characteristics of differing data formats. We will also assess the ability of COTS radios to change operating configurations "on-the-fly" and make recommendations concerning the number of HF and UHF channels required simultaneously in order to support likely operational scenarios. The knowledge gained in this effort can be used to expand into wider areas of investigation. Potential areas of further research could include further investigation of interfaces between COTS communications equipment and network components. Models created in this proposal can be used to determine techniques for the maximizing network and RF bandwidth efficiency in varying military and commercial satellite scenarios. Another potential area of future research is an investigation into the feasibility of packaging of radio components together with network and workstation components in an integrated chassis that provides end-to-end data processing. The objective of this research would be to develop a physically smaller, power and cooling efficient Information Transfer architecture.
Keywords: Commercial-Off-the-Shelf Transceiver Network Information-Transfer Submarine Communications Integration Compression
