SORTIE: A Self-Optimizing Radio Transceiver Integrated Enhancement for Communication Through the Canopy

Reliable and robust communications are critical to ensuring situational awareness and achieving mission success. Currently, communications under heavily occluded jungle canopy is unreliable or, in many cases, unavailable.  Deployed Army or special operations teams that must traverse the jungle environment are therefore out of communication, placing the mission at risk.  As threats evolve and adversarial forces become more sophisticated, the need for a technical solution to communications under the jungle canopy is increasingly urgent. To address this requirement, Nokomis developed the SORTIE technology. SORTIE enables communication through the jungle canopy through a combination of signal strength enhancement techniques and Digital Signal Processing (DSP), essentially pulling extremely attenuated signals out of the noise, enabling communications to occur where they would otherwise be impossible. This Phase II effort will mature and transition the SORTIE prototype. Lessons learned from prior testing will be leveraged to finalize SORTIE design. Manufactured prototypes will be tested with the Tropic Region Test Center (TRTC) in the jungle environment to achieve TRL 7. A Critical Design Review (CDR) will be conducted at the conclusion of the effort to improve MRL and facilitate SORTIE acquisition by the Army and combatant commands.