Office of Naval Research Grant for Advanced Naval Communications and Networking Technologies

University Affiliated Research Centers (UARC) are eligible to submit white papers under this BAA unless precluded from doing so by their Department of Defense UARC contracts.

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.

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 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.

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.

Some topics cover export controlled technologies. Research in these areas is limited to “U.S. persons” as defined in the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR) – 22 CFR § 1201.1 et seq. (See Section VII, Other Information)

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 312) is to support the FORCEnet vision 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. The vision is to provide high throughput robust communications and networking to ensure all warfighters — from the operational command to the tactical edge — have access to information, knowledge, and decision-making necessary to perform their assigned tasks.

Objective and Areas of Interest:

Proposals for potential FY12 Exploratory Development/Applied Research (Budget category 6.2) projects are sought under the following focus areas:

1. Novel approaches for wideband, electrically small, lightweight phased array apertures;

2. Alternatives to traditional SATCOM and network architectures for on-demand reach back, including low probability of detect/intercept wideband HF communications;

3. Technologies that enable low probability of detect/intercept for tactical data links against advanced electronic threats; enhanced synchronization of noise-like signals;

4. Spectrum co-existence (underlay/overlay, interference cancellation, etc.) of military waveforms
(RADAR and communications) with commercial communications; RF/baseband transmit and receive technologies for dynamic (and simultaneous) spectrum access to multiple non-contiguous narrowband channels across a wide frequency band (e.g., 100 MHz-10 GHz); machine learning and reasoning based algorithms/protocols for distributed spectral awareness and spectrum/network management;

5. High wall-plug efficient, power scaled (coherent and/or incoherent), blue-green transmitter technologies. High speed (Gbps), single-photon counting, blue-green detectors. High performance blue-green receiver waveforms/protocols with relaxed sync/timing accuracies;

6. Robust tools/approaches for de-confliction of traffic prioritization policies — according to Commander’s Intent — over a distributed, tactical network; and

7. Dynamic routing mechanisms that focus on robust data delivery — in near real time — under harsh networking conditions (i.e., intermittent connectivity, limited throughput, etc.).

ONR is also receptive to highly innovative ideas in other general communications and networking areas that are not within the designated focus areas above, but nonetheless are important to the Navy/Marine Corps, as determined under the synopsis section above.

************************************************************************************************************************************The FULL ANNOUNCEMENT is available on the Grants.gov website by scrolling to the top of the synopsis page and clicking on the “FULL ANNOUNCEMENT” box surrounded by the dotted line at the top of the page.