ROME, N.Y. — ANDRO Computational Solutions, LLC has been awarded a $2 million Direct-to-Phase II contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Washington, D.C. The pact will establish a federated fifth generation (5G) testbed ecosystem, called 5GTE, for advanced telecommunications experimentation, the company said. The award is highly competitive and part of […]
ROME, N.Y. — ANDRO Computational Solutions, LLC has been awarded a $2 million Direct-to-Phase II contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Washington, D.C.
The pact will establish a federated fifth generation (5G) testbed ecosystem, called 5GTE, for advanced telecommunications experimentation, the company said. The award is highly competitive and part of the multiphase Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracting vehicle, which paves the way for additional funding.
The purpose of the 5GTE is to develop scalable, open-source Internet of Things (IoT) 5G test environment capability to support research and development of nascent 5G technologies and advanced telecommunications-use cases, both fixed and mobile. The focus is to provide an open-source, realistic 5G radio-access network (RAN) to enable rapid prototyping of wireless protocols and applications including, but not limited to, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence (AI), and multi-access-edge-computing.
The 5GTE will serve as an open-validation platform for government vendors, industries, and academia to validate their 5G solutions prior to commercial rollout.
The contract will help create up to 10 new jobs at ANDRO and lay the foundation for future growth, company officials said.
The 5GTE project will leverage ANDRO’s extensive research base in AI and wireless cybersecurity applications development for next generation 5G innovations. A key requirement is the ability to rapidly and accurately scale as new technologies and devices are introduced.
“The 5GTE must also provide remote access and device update capabilities,” ANDRO President Andrew Drozd said. “To broaden the range of supported devices and to facilitate development, 5GTE will have the ability to support different wireless communication technologies, for example 4G, wireless fidelity, and others.”
The award allows ANDRO to explore the boundaries of deploying AI models for enhancing security to infuse Zero-Trust principles within the open RAN architecture standards.
ANDRO’s Marconi-Rosenblatt AI Innovation Lab, led by Jithin Jagannath and Anu Jagannath, will spearhead the research effort with ANDRO’s academic partner, the Wireless Internet of Things Research Laboratory at Northeastern University, which has a wealth of 5G assets and related test resources. The team also includes ANDRO researchers Suhail Shaik and Mohammed Abu Zaid, residents and graduates of the University at Buffalo.
The company anticipates potential future funding would look to expand the 5GTE ecosystem participation, bringing greater 5G, Beyond 5G, and Future-G presence for commercialization and military transition benefit.
ANDRO provides research, engineering, and technical services to defense and commercial industries in advanced spectrum exploitation, secure wireless communications, software-based waveform development, cognitive software-defined radio networking, multi-sensor data fusion, and sensor-resource management.
