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MPRG Works on $15 Million Military
Communictions Effort
The department's Mobile &
Portable Radio Research Group (MPRG) is collaborating with
Raytheon Company on a $15 million project to develop advanced
technologies for the Airborne Communications Node (ACN) for military
communications.
Other team members on the Phase II project for the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are BAE SYSTEMS, LGIC, Inc.,
General Dynamics, Zeger-Abrams, Lucent Technologies, HRL, and
Ball Aerospace. MPRG's work on the project is expected to represent
more than $1 million in funding.
The ACN payload will act as a surrogate satellite that will relay
voice and data communications among ground forces, enabling them
to communicate well beyond line-of-sight. While it will be capable
of being hosted on a variety of airborne platforms, the current
plan is to test the first prototype on an unmanned aerial vehicle,
according to Brian
Woerner, lead investigator for the MPRG project.
"Raytheon's ACN is a multi-mission, scalable payload that
can be used not only as a communications relay to improve battlefield
support, but also will be capable of surveillance and information
operations," said Hank Orejuela, vice president of Raytheon's
Information and Advanced Systems business area.
MPRG's effort on the project will focus on reconfigurable antennas,
signal processing techniques, mobile networking innovations,
optical networks, and several enabling technologies. The project
will tap Tech's expertise in overloaded array processing, robust
demodulation, reconfigurable antennas, and single channel interference
mitigation techniques.
Department faculty members on the project include Woerner, Jeff Reed,
Bill Tranter,
Warren
Stutzman, and William
Davis.
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