Jamie Bennet
RTX‘s research and development organization has secured a $6.6 million contract with the Department of Defense to develop multi-hop mobile ad hoc network technology for military 5G communications.
The company said Thursday that BBN will carry out the two-year project as part of the Opportunistic eXtemporarY 5G Encrypted Network program led by DOD’s FutureG and 5G Office.
BBN will collaborate with Kryptowire, Novowi and Curated Networks on the MANET development effort aimed at connecting at least 20 user devices through 5G sidelink technology.
Chris Vander Valk, research engineer at BBN, noted the partnership will employ cryptographic scrambling and secure memory compartmentalization to achieve program objectives.
“Access to a 5G MANET allows us to move from single-digit megabit per second individual data sharing, for ground soldiers to 100 times more throughput, which will enable sharing more high-resolution video and imagery,” said Daniel Massey, program lead for the FutureG and 5G Office’s Operate Through team.
