DARPA awards wireless technology development contract

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has awarded a $14.8 million contract to Cobham Sensor Systems to develop wireless technology for next-generation tactical radios.

Under the contract, Cobham Sensor Systems will design, develop and demonstrate low-cost wireless network nodes which rely on distributed network processing, company officials said today. The award was made through the Wireless Network after Next program.

Through the WNaN program, the DOD hopes to establish an affordable and reliable way to provide battlefield communications to a large number of users. The idea behind the program is that low-cost nodes – handheld digital communications devices on the network – would be used in combination with an adaptable battlefield ad hoc network to deliver reliable voice and data communications to each soldier. Field trials are scheduled for 2010.

Cobham Sensor Systems, of Lowell, Mass., provides active and passive microwave components, assemblies and subsystems, and composites and radomes.