Air Force re-ups Raytheon for DARPA wireless project

Raytheon Co. has won a $4 million contract to continue developing technology for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Next Generation Wireless Communications program, the company announced this week.

The Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, N.Y. awarded the next-generation, or XG, contract under phase 2 of the program. Raytheon Co. of Lexington, Mass., will provide system and technique development and integration, coupled with significant modeling and simulation of spectrum sharing in XG systems.

Raytheon will demonstrate achievable special efficiency improvements by June 2004, with a goal of 10 to 20 times today's spectrum use.

A follow-on phase 3 program to perform field demonstrations will validate the technology in realistic conditions and will set the stage for transition of XG technologies to the military services and potentially to commercial applications.

XG is intended to enable revolutionary improvements in the efficient use of electromagnetic spectrum. Raytheon will provide a set of spectrum access cognitive radio algorithms and protocols, integrated into an XG demonstration system. It will include XG adaptation layer for insertion into existing and future military radios such as those being developed under the Joint Tactical Radio Systems specifications.

Raytheon, a provider of products and services for defense, government, commercial electronics, space, information technology, technical services and business and special mission aircraft, has more than 76,000 employees and annual sales of $16.8 billion.