Los Angeles, California (March 16, 2021) – Silvus Technologies, Inc. (“Silvus”) today announced the company has been awarded a contract worth up to $13.1 million as part of DARPA’s Resilient Networked Distributed Mosaic Communications (RN DMC) program. Under RN DMC, Silvus will develop a distributed beamforming/beamnulling solution to enable resilient, long-range terrestrial communications of up to 100km using multiple collaborative radios distributed over hundreds of meters.
RN DMC stems from DARPA’s investment in mosaic warfare, a concept in which large numbers of lower-cost systems, referred to as “tiles,” are deployed to perform complex mission functions in a coordinated fashion. By building a mosaic of inter-connected tiles, functions such as command and control, communications, and sensing can be performed with more resilience and higher performance.
Building on a proven track record of developing real-time solutions enabling distributed frequency and time synchronization, Silvus’ solution for RN DMC is dubbed Mosaic Scattered Wide-Area Resilient Network (MScWRN or M2N). M2N will enable spatially distributed beamforming and beamnulling with minimal communications required between tiles, resulting in mosaic clusters that are able to bridge large range gaps while seamlessly interoperating with the rest of a traditional Silvus mesh network.
“The reliability of long-range communications utilizing multiple radios distributed over large distances is a critical component in DARPA’s vision of mosaic warfare,” said Dr. Babak Daneshrad, Chief Executive Officer of Silvus. “The RN DMC program will enable the continued development of our M2N solution, and we look forward to demonstrating its matured operation.”
Note to readers:
Since 2018, DARPA has placed significant emphasis on the development of “Mosaic Warfare,” bringing together individual warfighting platforms to create a larger “force package.”
Under the Resilient Networked Distributed Mosaic Communications (RN DMC) program, Silvus will develop a beamforming/beamnulling solution that will enable reliable and resilient long range terrestrial communications utilizing multiple collaborative radios distributed over large distances – an integral component to DARPA’s vision for the future of Mosaic Warfare.
love DARPA acronyms
So like a whole bunch of walkie talkies?
Yes.. BUT, it is what happens when you make them do fancy things that set it apart from a regular walkie talkie. Imagine you have a dozen squads on the ground each with a single radio operator that has this fancy 10W radio. Right now, intersquad comms can talk to base through the radio operators well beyond the 10W range due to beamforming, which uses constructive interference to make the radio act like a 20W radio. It can also “steer” the signal away from objects that create reflective interference, like things made of metal and water, further improving signal quality and range, or even use those things to reflect the signal around obstacles.
Distributed beamforming allows those dozen 10W radios, each acting like a 20W radio, to act like a single massive 80W radio, by cooperatively tuning their phase and amplitude. This can allow you to have the same range as a vehicle mounted antenna with only small man portable radios. If the entire squad is outfitted with beamforming radios, the group can have the same effective output power as a fixed basestation, hundreds of watts, and thus get the 100km figure that DARPA wants.
Since they radios all talk to eachother in groups, if one squad is out of range, they can be selected as a beamform target to get them back in range, even if they are unable to cooperatively beamform, they can still communicate with base through the rest of the squad’s radios (the resilient part of the acronym).