OpportunityTitle: FY 17 Communications and Networking Discovery and Invention
AdditionalInformationOnEligibility: A. All responsible sources from academia and industry may submit proposals under this BAA. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Minority Institutions (MIs) are encouraged to submit proposals and join others in submitting proposals.  However, no portion of this BAA will be set aside for HBCU and MI participation, due to the impracticality of reserving discrete or severable items of this research for exclusive competition among such entities.    B. Federally Funded Research &amp; Development Centers (FFRDCs), including Department of Energy National Laboratories, are not eligible to receive awards under this BAA.  However, teaming arrangements between FFRDCs and eligible principal Offerors are allowed so long as such arrangements are permitted under the sponsoring agreement between the Government and the specific FFRDC.    C. Navy laboratories and warfare centers as well as other Department of Defense and civilian agency laboratories are also not eligible to receive awards under this BAA and should not directly submit either white papers or full proposals in response to this BAA.  If any such organization is interested in one or more of the programs described herein, the organization should contact an appropriate ONR Technical POC to discuss its area of interest.  The various scientific divisions of ONR are identified at http://www.onr.navy.mil/.  As with FFRDCs, these types of federal organizations may team with other responsible sources from academia and industry that are submitting proposals under this BAA.    D. University Affiliated Research Centers (UARCs) are eligible to submit proposals under this BAA unless precluded from doing so by their Department of Defense UARC contract.  E. Teams are also encouraged and may submit proposals in any and all areas.  However, Offerors must be willing to cooperate and exchange software, data and other information in an integrated program with other contractors, as well as with system integrators, selected by ONR.    F. Offerors should be aware of recent changes in export control laws.  Offerors are responsible for ensuring compliance with all International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR)(22 CFR &#167;120 et. seq.) requirements, as applicable. In some cases, developmental items funded by the Department of Defense are now included on the United States Munition List (USML) and are therefore subject to ITAR jurisdiction.  Offerors should address in their proposals whether ITAR restrictions apply or do not apply, such as in the case when research products would have both civil and military application, to the work they are proposing to perform for ONR.  The USML is available online at http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?node=pt22.1.121.  Additional information regarding the President&apos;s Export Control Reform Initiative can be found at http://export.gov/ecr/index.asp.    G. Cost sharing is not expected and will not be used as a factor during the merit review of any proposal hereunder.  However, the Government may consider voluntary cost sharing if proposed.
Description: Communications technology that can provide seamless, robust, connectivity is at the foundation of the Sea Power 21 and FORCEnet Vision &quot;... to have the right information, at the right place, at the right time ...&quot; The performance of Command and Control (C2) systems and decision making at all levels of command depend critically on reliable, interoperable, survivable, secure, and timely communications and networking, and the availability of high capacity multimedia (voice, data, imagery) communication networks is fundamental to nearly all Department of Navy missions. The current evolution of naval warfighting from a platform-centric to a network-centric paradigm depends on successfully meeting the implied need for significantly enhanced communications and networking capabilities of C2, sensor and weapon systems. These systems are deployed on a variety of platforms and users, both manned and unmanned, operating under challenging battlefield conditions (lack of infrastructure, mobility, spectrum, interference, multipath, atmospherics, size/weight/power constraint, etc.) in different environments (space, terrestrial and undersea). The goal of the Communications and Networking Program within the Office of Naval Research (ONR 311) is to support the FORCEnet vision by developing measurable advances in technology that can directly enable and enhance end-to-end connectivity and quality-of-service for mission-critical information exchange among such widely dispersed naval, joint, and coalition forces. The vision is to provide high throughput robust communications and networking to ensure all warfighters -- from the operational command to the tactical edge -- have access to information, knowledge, and decision-making necessary to perform their assigned tasks. Objective and Areas of Interest: White papers for potential FY17 Exploratory Development/Applied Research (Budget category 6.2) projects are sought under the following focus areas: 1. Compact and deployable circular polarization antenna in the UHF-, X-, or Ka-, band with high radiation efficiency and adaptive gain pattern for multi-U form factor cubesatellite communications. 2. Near-capacity (Shannon) wideband communications mode operation over multi-channel AESA pulsed radar hardware chain (beamformer - T/R module - antenna array). Potential challenges for high bit rate communications include, amongst others, novel coding/modulation schemes resilient to saturated nonlinear power amplifier regimes, exploitation of pulse-to-pulse phase coherence and MIMO. 3. Enhanced waveform and diversity techniques including innovative tracking for mobile troposcatter (C- to Ku- bands). S&amp;T focus on solutions that can reuse existing apertures, minimally impact HW, and permit modular upgrade. 4. Robust and (throughput) efficient wireless medium access mechanisms for mobile LPI/LPD network communications operating under high dynamic range, and high-interference rejection (e.g., spectral underlay), receive conditions. 5. Mechanisms to guarantee delivery of traffic across a multi-hop ad-hoc network within a specified latency; optimization of traffic based on multiple parameters (e.g., priority, latency, jitter, etc.); multi-path TCP implementations that are cognizant of variations in path characteristics and traffic priority, and do not impact application performance; store/forward and disruption-tolerant network implementations across a cipher-text core. The Office of Naval Research (ONR) is receptive to innovative ideas, which are not within the above focus areas, but nonetheless are important to the Navy/Marine Corps communications and networking, as determined under the synopsis section above. **************************************************************************************************** ANNOUNCEMENT is available on the Grants.gov website by scrolling to the top of the synopsis page and clicking on the &quot;FULL ANNOUNCEMENT&quot; box.
GrantorContactEmailDescription: Grants.gov Questions
GrantorContactText: Caitlin O&apos;Neill &lt;br/&gt;Contract Specialist &lt;br/&gt;Phone 703-696-0802