VADUM INC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: A20-116
VADUM INC — SBIR Phase I award from Department of Defense.
- Amount
- $111,448
- Agency
- Department of Defense · Army
- Program / Phase
- SBIR · Phase I
- Topic
- A20-116
- Solicitation
- 20.2
- NAICS
- —
- Place of performance
- NC
- Period
- 2020-11-02 → 2021-10-01
Description
Vadum will develop and simulate a low-overhead beamforming protocol for Distributed Coherent Communications (DC2) using non-developmental waveforms that will enable bi-directional transmit (TX) and receive (RX) squad-to-squad and squad-to-base station beamforming. The Vadum approach uses transparent applique firmware and/or minor modifications to currently-deployed tactical MANET protocols to implement an innovative Master-Slave architecture with no increase in radio size, weight, and power (SWAP). The Master-Slave architecture uses direct power measurement and closed-loop feedback to achieve beamforming with no requirement for GPS position information and no limit on number of participating nodes. Coherent gain is achieved using a novel hybrid of experimentally demonstrated techniques for phase synchronization, power control, and implicit time and frequency synchronization via low-latency retransmission. The hybrid approach enables better performance with respect to link closure, response to dynamic channel impairments, and power/bandwidth efficiency.