Intelligent Automation, Inc. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: A16-034

Description

Wireless connectivity and situational awareness of warfighters are critical in current and future warfare. Maintaining network connectivity and achieving situational awareness require continuous exchange of information across the network, which eventually drives the need for reliable, high data rate communication links. The task of providing high data rate communication is ever more challenging for the Army with the need of providing connectivity in a mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) framework which is known to have fundamental capacity limit. Inclusion of antenna array in MANET framework brings many challenges that have to be overcome.To address this challenge, Intelligent Automation Inc. (IAI) proposes to develop a Directional Antenna Control SYStem (DACSYS) for radios, without modifying radio waveforms. DACSYS is designed to support a wide variety of antenna systems in general and steerable parasitic antenna arrays in particular. DACSYS modules include hardware, firmware, and software. DACSYS hardware includes sensors for estimating 6 degrees of freedom (6 DOF) of position of the antenna system. It also has an FPGA and a processor to support signal processing and antenna control modules.