Jay Clemens
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has unveiled the $2 million Spectrum Collaboration Challenge that seeks to develop software-defined radios that could work with other simultaneously operating radios in the electromagnetic spectrum.
The phased challenge will begin in 2017 and run for three years and has 30 slots available to interested participants who will contend to develop spectrum-sharing radio-frequency communications, DARPA said Tuesday.
The agency noted in March that the competition aims to provide all military and civilian wireless devices access to the full electromagnetic spectrum.
“We want to radically accelerate the development of machine learning technologies and strategies that will allow on-the-fly sharing of spectrum at machine timescales,” said Paul Tilghman, program manager for SC2 within DARPA’s Microsystems Technology Office.
The challenge covers several phases that include two tracks where candidates will receive a funded contract from DARPA and demonstrate their software-defined radio system and artificial intelligence techniques.
SC2Â will culminate in a championship event scheduled in 2019 where teams that won in the two preliminary rounds will vie for the grand prize.
DARPA said it released a broad agency announcement discussing the challenge’s two preliminary events on FedBizOpps.
Another BAA relays the competition architecture, scoring methodology and rules, while a special notice states the scheduled Proposers Days in August.
