Rockwell Collins begins work on $5.3 million DARPA radio contract

Rockwell Collins has begun work on a $5.3 million contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to increase the capabilities of software-defined radios.

Software-defined radios provide the capability for a single radio to generate multiple wave forms, allowing them to serve the functions of many different conventional radios.

The DARPA program is called RADER, for The Remote Analog to Digital Converter with Deserialization and Reconstruction (RADER). It calls for Rockwell Collins to develop power-efficient high-speed photonic analog to digital (A/D) converters with capability for remote operation.

The aim of the contract is to significantly increase "countermeasure" capabilities, the ability to respond to hostile actions such as jamming.

Research now under way will conclude at the end of 2012 under the terms of the agreement.

The contract was the second RADER contract awarded to Rockwell Collins.

“In this stage of the RADER program, we'll be working to shrink the A/D technology that we developed in Phase 1 onto a single silicon device,” explained John Borghese, vice president, Advanced Technology Center for Rockwell Collins.

“The miniaturization of the technology we've already proven will enable integration into next generation radio devices.”

The research could ultimately be applied across a broad spectrum of military and commercial communication devices, the company said.