Office of Naval Research: FY16 Communications and Networks Discovery and Invention Grant

B. Federally Funded Research & Development Centers (FFRDCs), including Department of Energy National Laboratories, are not eligible to receive awards under this BAA. However, teaming arrangements between FFRDCs and eligible principal bidders are allowed so long as they are permitted under the sponsoring agreement between the Government and the specific FFRDC.

C. Navy laboratories and warfare centers as well as other Department of Defense and civilian agency laboratories are also not eligible to receive awards under this BAA and should not directly submit either white papers or full proposals in response to this BAA. If any such organization is interested in one or more of the programs described herein, the organization should contact an appropriate ONR Technical POC to discuss its area of interest. The various scientific divisions of ONR are identified at http://www.onr.navy.mil/. As with FFRDCs, these types of federal organizations may team with other responsible sources from academia and industry that are submitting proposals under this BAA.

D. University Affiliated Research Centers (UARCs) are eligible to submit proposals under this BAA unless precluded from doing so by their Department of Defense UARC contract
E. Teams are also encouraged and may submit proposals in any and all areas. However, Offerors must be willing to cooperate and exchange software, data and other information in an integrated program with other contractors, as well as with system integrators, selected by ONR.

F. Some topics cover export controlled technologies. Research in these areas is limited to “U.S. persons” as defined in the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) -22 CFR § 120.1 et seq.

G. Cost sharing is not expected and will not be used as a factor during the merit review of any proposal hereunder. However, the Government may consider voluntary cost sharing if proposed.

Communications technology that can provide seamless, robust connectivity is at the foundation of the Sea Power 21 Vision “… to have the right information, at the right place, at the right time …” The performance of Command and Control (C2) systems and decision making at all levels of command depends critically on reliable, interoperable, survivable, secure, and timely communications and networking.

The current evolution of naval warfighting from a platform-centric to a network-centric paradigm depends on successfully meeting the implied need for significantly enhanced communications and networking capabilities of C2, sensor and weapon systems. These systems are deployed on a variety of platforms and users, both manned and unmanned, operating under challenging battlefield conditions (lack of infrastructure, mobility, spectrum, interference, multipath, atmospherics, size/weight/power constraint, etc.) in different environments (space, terrestrial and undersea).

The goal of the Communications and Networking Program within the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Code 311 is to overcome these challenges by developing measurable advances in technology that can directly enable and enhance end-to-end connectivity and quality-of-service for mission-critical information exchange among such widely dispersed naval, joint, and coalition forces.

Proposals for potential FY16 Exploratory Development/Applied Research (Budget Activity 2) projects are sought under the following focus areas. Highly innovative ideas in other general communications and networking areas that are not within the designated focus areas below, but nonetheless are important to the Navy/Marine Corps, as determined under the synopsis section above may also be considered:

1. Nanosat optical and RF communications: Novel architectures, techniques and technologies specially focused on the hard problems

2. Interference-aligned digital chaos for scalable spectrally-efficient LPI/LPD networking

3. Dynamic scheduling, routing and topology control to efficiently and reliably deliver critical/high priority data to multiple nodes over directional tactical wireless network

4. Innovative techniques for data forwarding and bridging networks with different routing mechanisms, protocols (e.g., IP and non-IP) and QoS parametrics.

5. Software-defined wireless networking architectures/protocols, and exploratory paradigms for control (centralized/distributed), network state sensing (link state, latency, etc.), and resource utilization.