The rapid rise of wireless communication usage in the United States over the past decade has required ever-increasing amounts of spectrum—radio frequencies on which wireless users communicate. This has presented a difficult challenge to spectrum regulators—how to find additional spectrum for commercial applications. Both President Obama and President Trump have directed that spectrum previously allocated for the exclusive use of federal users such as the military be made available for commercial use as well. But effective spectrum sharing requires both military and commercial users to follow specific rules of spectrum use based on geography, time, priorities of use, and a dynamic RF environment.

ANDRO has developed procedures to support the regulation of shared and technologies to ensure efficient spectrum utilization within the appropriate regulatory framework. ANDRO has developed policy engines that operate in cognitive radios to maximize spectrum use while conforming to existing rules. In addition, these policies have been integrated into existing military spectrum planning tools to ensure that existing spectrum planning tools and procedures used by military planners are enhanced by this technology.

Whether on the battlefield or in an urban area, the proliferation of communication devices is resulting in greater and greater congestion of the airwaves.  There is only a finite amount of spectrum available, and it is increasingly challenging to find available and authorized frequencies on which to communicate, whether from a soldier to his or her commander, or an autonomous vehicle navigating a busy street.

ANDRO has developed technology that allows devices to sense the spectrum environment, identify spectrum available for use, determine the best spectrum option to utilize in a given situation based on efficiency considerations and/or policies, and quickly reconfigure devices to utilize that spectrum.

Our approach provides more resilient communications capabilities that are not constrained by congestion on a single channel or frequency band and can avoid interference (whether intentional or unintentional).  Our AXL-Force software has been applied to communications involving drones and among ground forces in military exercises.

Radio waveforms are the set of radio functions executed to convert input (audio, such as a person’s speech, or data, such as a text message) into transmitted energy, and to perform the reverse functions of converting received energy back into its original format.  Waveforms incorporate a variety of processing functions to enhance the reliability, efficiency and security of the transmission.  To accommodate the required processing speed while maintaining a small form factor for mobile devices, waveforms are typically implemented using field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs).  While FPGAs provide some flexibility because they are re-programmable, there is typically significant time and expense required to implement a waveform in an FPGA.

ANDRO has developed technology and procedures to rapidly implement waveforms on general purpose processors.  We have developed an extensive library of waveform software components that can be used to compose baseline waveform capabilities, as well as techniques for rapidly implementing and modifying components to meet waveform specifications.  While this approach is not intended to result in final waveform products, it is a useful tool for developing, testing, and evaluating waveform designs without requiring the time and expense of implementing in FPGAs.  Rapidly prototyped waveforms can also be used to test interoperability among evolving waveforms or between new waveforms and legacy waveforms.

We typically associate wireless communication with environments that have plenty of infrastructure support to provide access points, cell towers, repeaters, amplifiers, and so on, connected to power grid to provide continuous coverage. But there are other situations in which the availability of supporting infrastructure is limited in availability or cost-constrained. Such austere environments include remote test ranges used by the military, areas where infrastructure has suffered catastrophic weather damage, remote areas where firefighters are often deployed to combat wildfires, and even underserved urban areas where residents do not have, or cannot afford, high speed Internet access.

ANDRO has developed a Heterogeneous Efficient Low Power Radio (HELPER) Network for enabling off-the-grid connectivity. HELPER is a standalone ad hoc network using no dedicated Infrastructure that can be setup and run over extended periods of time. By designing the network nodes to minimize power requirements, leveraging LongRange (LoRa) protocols, and using optimized energy efficient routing, HELPER provides a unique capability for text messaging, sending alerts, and transmitting other low bandwidth data independent of Internet or other communication infrastructure. For last mile connectivity, and to ensure ease of participation (no learning curve to end user), HELPER also leverages WiFi protocol to allow common mobile devices to access the HELPER network via a web application.

HELPER applications range from collecting telemetry on remote test ranges where infrastructure buildout is costly, to emergency response where infrastructure does not exist or has been destroyed, to providing health monitoring and other municipal data services to residents who cannot afford, or do not have, full Internet access.