Submarine Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) Digital Radio for Ad-Hoc Networked Communications

Lexycom is proposing to design a miniature, lightweight, power efficient, encrypted, multi-service, software defined radio (SDR) transceiver for use in a mobile ad-hoc Network (MANET). To reduce the SDRs"power consumption, Lexycom plans to implement a reactive ad-hoc network enhanced by a contention-based technique and/or by a scheduling protocol. To strengthen security and improve the data link RF budget, the system will be equipped with miniature Self-Structuring Antennas (SSA). The SDR-driven SSAs would optimize their aperture in response to the Network nodes"movements, and to compensate for platform drift. They would also maintain detuning immunity when covered with water. Lexycom will use their already existing multi-service (data, video, and voice) SDR platform as a test-bed to determine the optimum waveform for the sought over-the-horizon (OTH) MANET. We foresee the proposed SDRs to perform cognitive spectrum utilization by implementing closed-loop QoS-based packet-by-packet waveform adjustments. Our preliminary study shows that the proposed solution might weigh as little as 10 oz. ( The proposed SDRs would be in-field upgradable running an optional real-time operating system (RTOS) for additional flexibility to facilitate diagnostics.