ANDRO wins $1.1 million Army contract

ROME, N.Y. — ANDRO Computational Solutions, LLC was awarded a $1.1 million U.S. Army contract to develop DeepSPEC, a platform for enhancing radio frequency (RF) signal detection and classification.

“DeepSPEC aims to revolutionize technologies for spectrum awareness in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance applications by miniaturizing neural networks deployed or embedded edge devices such as tactical radios,” ANDRO President Dr. Andrew Drozd said in a news release.

According to Drozd, the Army is seeking more-effective methods to sift through noisy RF spectral environments consisting of radar and tactical-communication signals. It needs the ability to intuitively visualize what is happening when it happens.

“The ultimate aim of DeepSPEC is to ensure comprehensive spectrum awareness for every Army platoon and battalion for timely actionable intelligence,” said Anu Jagannath, associate director of ANDRO’s Marconi-Rosenblatt Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Innovation Lab. Lab director and chief scientist of technology Dr. Jithin Jagannath and Anu Jagannath will spearhead work on the project.

“Spectrum holds unprecedented information which, if correctly and swiftly interpreted, can save the lives of our warfighters,” Anu Jagannath added.

ANDRO has engaged Lockheed Martin as a transition partner to embed DeepSPEC into small form-factor tactical radios in the next contract phase to service Department of Defense programs of record.

DeepSPEC builds on ANDRO’s prior research for the Army, Air Force, Navy, and other Department of Defense agencies to develop advanced automatic modulation and signal classification systems for use in soldier-mounted software defined radios. Over the past decade, ANDRO has led advanced research in applying artificial intelligence/machine learning, artificial neural networks, and deep-learning techniques to software defined radio platforms solving a wide range of challenging radio frequency signal intelligence and wireless community security problems.

ANDRO envisions DeepSPEC to have broad and diverse applications beyond the realm of the Department of Defense, such as improving the spectrum sensing performance of intelligent-communication systems used for managing the coexistence of communication and radar systems in the commercial Citizens Broadband Radio Services.

The success of programs like DeepSPEC will put ANDRO (www.androcs.com) one step closer to its plans to establish a lightweight-radio production center in Rome.