Silvus Technologies wins DARPA wireless communications prototype contract

Silvus Technologies has announced that it has been awarded a DARPA contract for prototype development for Phase I of the Fixed Wireless at a Distance programme.

Silvus is being sponsored by the Air Force Research Lab for the project, and the contract value for Phase I including options is $1 million. 

The company is drawing on its experience in developing advanced multi-input multi-output (MIMO) wireless technology, and subcontractors to Silvus are BAE Systems and Alcatel Lucent Bell Labs acting through LGS Innovations.

‘Current military communication systems have limited ability to support mobile, distributed operations in remote geographic areas due to the small size of networks and relatively short range of individual military radios,’ a statement released by the company said. ‘The Fixed Wireless at a Distance program seeks to enable pervasive, high-throughput military communications to geographically dispersed forces using a mobility backbone infrastructure that provides unlimited scalability for high-speed communication for warfighters.’

In response to this requirement Silvus will deliver a ‘fully self-organizing and highly-scalable communications solution’, while ‘advanced MIMO techniques and proprietary Media Access Control (MAC) protocols will be exploited to seamlessly scale from as few as 10 distributed antennas to as many as 100 antennas, or more.

‘The resulting deliverable will be a distributed multi-antenna communication system that delivers performance on par with that of a centralized multi-antenna system.’

Phillip Duncan, Silvus’ COO and VP of business development, commented: ‘We are delighted to have an opportunity to work with DARPA and our partners Alcatel Lucent Bell Labs and BAE to bring next-generation technology one step closer to the reality.

‘With years of experience developing MIMO technologies for military and commercial applications, Silvus is uniquely positioned to leverage its expertise to bring a much needed capability to the warfighter.’