Physical Optics Corporation — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: SB162-008

Description

To address DARPAs need for a more efficient group-to-group communication technology for low size, weight, and power (SWaP) sensor ensembles or swarms, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop a new Inter-ensemble Coherent Distributed Communication (ICDC) technology based on a coherent distributed beamforming from a map-based, deterministic signal transmission and reception. Specifically, periodic node-to-node distance measurements will allow construction, updating, and sharing of the node distribution for ad hoc distributed beamforming. Once the node distribution is determined, synchronization of the nodes in frequency, phase, and timing is achieved, and a cooperative communication can be initiated. As a result, the ICDC technology offers group-to-group distributed communication in a highly dynamic environment, which directly addresses the DARPA requirements in next generation communication protocols. In Phase I, POC will demonstrate the feasibility of ICDC by investigating its performance via numerical simulation and by verifying the key components of the technology experimentally, reaching TRL-3. In Phase II, POC plans to construct a large-scale prototype with more than ten nodes in each ensemble and demonstrate the full feasibility to reach TRL-5.