FY16 Communications and Networks Discovery and Invention

archived

White papers are required prior to submitting full proposals. 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.

High