Cognitive Radio RFI MAR 2023.pdf

UNCLASSIFIED

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) / SOURCES SOUGHT (SS) NOTICE

HANDHELD COGNITIVE RADIO

(U) The Government is requesting information on Cognitive Radio systems, including development efforts towards Cognitive Radio management algorithms, advanced waveforms, and novel hardware that serves to improve communications in congested and contested

Electromagnetic Spectrum (EMS) environments.

(U) THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) AND NOT A SOLICITATION. This

RFI is for planning purposes only and shall not be considered an invitation for bid, request for quotation, request for proposal, or as an obligation on the part of the Government to acquire any products or services. Your response to this RFI will be treated as information only and will follow a three-phase timeline (please see below timeline section). No entitlement to payment of direct or indirect costs or charges by the Government will arise because of contractor submission of responses to this announcement or the Government’s use of such information.

This request does not constitute a request for proposals or the authority to enter negotiations to award a contract. No funds have been authorized, appropriated, or received for this effort. The information provided may be used by the Government in developing an acquisition strategy, or performance work statements, or specifications. Interested parties are responsible for adequately marking proprietary or competition sensitive information contained in their responses. The

Government is not required to award a contract based on this RFI or to otherwise pay for the information submitted in response to this RFI.

(U) By submitting information in response to this RFI, respondents consent to the release and dissemination of submitted information to any Government entity. As such, to the extent that any information submitted in response to this RFI is marked as, or construed to be proprietary or business-sensitive, respondents are hereby notified (a) of the potential that such information may be disclosed to the third party referenced below and (b) that submission of information in response to this RFI constitutes consent to disclosure of submitted information. The Government expects to have contractor support during its review of RFI responses from Booz Allen Hamilton

(BAH). Industry Partners (IP) are encouraged to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) with BAH for their submissions. An IP that chooses to enter an NDA with BAH shall coordinate with and submit its corporate NDA to the POC listed below, specifically referencing this RFI's number and title in the NDA’s scope. If an NDA is signed, the NDA shall be submitted with the RFI response information.

Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH)

POC: Courtney Koy

Telephone: 202.327.1461

Email: Koy_courtney@bah.com

(U) Technical questions regarding this RFI should be directed to Renee Grace

(renee.grace@gsa.gov) and Melissa Hanson (melissa.hanson@gsa.gov) no later than 11:00 AM

EST on 14 April 2023. Phone calls will not be accepted.

mailto:Koy_courtney@bah.com mailto:renee.grace@gsa.gov

(U) The Government requests responses to this RFI be submitted NO LATER THAN 28 April

2023 at 3:00 PM EST. All interested parties should submit in writing (no more than

20 single-spaced pages) their capabilities, experience, and familiarity with providing Cognitive

Radio capabilities framed by the attributes identified below. A response of 'no' or 'not provided with the given capability' is an appropriate answer. The complete response to this RFI is limited to a total of 20 pages. The Government is not seeking marketing materials in response to the RFI.

The responses should be in Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF) or in a format compatible with Microsoft Office. Please submit your responses via email to Renee Grace

(renee.grace@gsa.gov) and Melissa Hanson (melissa.hanson@gsa.gov) no later than 3:00 PM

EST on 28 April 2023. Phone calls will not be accepted.

SCOPE:

(U) To meet current threats to radio communications in congested and contested environments, radio development is required for devices that intelligently adapt, optimize, and/or restore communications without manual intervention. Devices must also autonomously scale from higher performance configurations (i.e., uncontested) to higher resiliency configurations, and adapt to the continuously evolving EMS environment. Submitters to this RFI should understand that for some listed questions, there may be no existing product that can address the subject.

Submitters to this RFI can have any listed capability or capabilities in development for Cognitive

Radios, algorithms, or waveforms. Example capabilities are algorithms that manage waveforms, waveforms for use in congested environments, or hardware that supports the integration of cognitive radio capability (e.g., algorithms, waveforms, signal processing, etc.). The Government has substantial interest in not only individual technologies, but also the ability to cohesively integrate them into a unified solution.

(U) The Government is seeking capabilities at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of 4 or greater within the scope of this technology. TRL 4 is defined as “Component/subsystem validation in laboratory environment: Standalone prototype implementation and test. Integration of technology elements. Experiments with full-scale problems or data sets.” While TRL 4 technology is sought, responders with only some of the listed capabilities are encouraged to submit to this RFI.

PURPOSE:

(U) The purpose of this RFI is to solicit inputs for an assessment of Cognitive Radio (CR) technology and to understand any changes or development that may have occurred in this field since the November 17, 2021 Technology and Innovation Summit. This assessment is to specifically identify the state of cognitive radio technologies and capabilities that can provide

Special Operations Forces (SOF) with improved functionality in contested and congested EMS environments. The responses will help inform a research and development strategy and can aid in steering the direction taken by potential customers for future systems and technologies.

TIMELINE:

(U) Phase 0 – Request for Information: Handheld Cognitive Radio development RFI submitted to Industry 31 March 2023.

(U) Phase 1 – RFI Responses: Industry Partners with technology capabilities that potentially meet the areas of interest are encouraged to submit RFI responses no later than (NLT) 28 April

2023. Note: The Government will respond to questions about the RFI that are provided to the

Contracting Officer NLT 21 April 2023. All correspondence (questions and answers) will be by email to the Contracting Officer.

(U) Each response to the Cognitive Radio RFI will be reviewed for technical merit, innovation, and extensibility in providing or developing Cognitive Radios, algorithms, or waveforms that improve Warfighter capabilities.

(U) Technical merit will review the following:

• Feasibility of successfully implementing the solution in a relevant operational environment

• Technical approach is appropriate for reaching the proposed solution

• Maturity of current state is clearly defined to include current Technology Readiness

Level (TRL), approach for reaching prototype, and approach for reaching final production

• Risks are outlined with suitable methods of risk reduction explained

(U) Innovation will review the following:

• Applying unique or novel approach to solving problems

• New systems or products that provide efficiency, effectiveness, and/or rapid results

• Degree to which the solution improves current capabilities

(U) Extensibility will review the following:

• Ability to add new functionality or modify existing functionality to meet new operational constraints/challenges

• Ability to integrate with solutions from academia or other organizations

• Ability to scale functionality to meet objective requirements

(U) Phase 2 – Immediate Post RFI Actions: RFI responses that were reviewed to have the highest potential to satisfy the technology requirements for Cognitive Radios may be contacted for additional information requests. For technology that did not meet the potential to satisfy technology requirements, industry partners will be notified by email with additional detail NLT

19 May 2023.

(U) Phase 3 – Follow-on Efforts: The Government will decide if further testing or a potential future competitive acquisition is desired based on review of the RFI response.

RFI Attributes of Interest:

(U) Within the following section, eleven (11) central attributes are presented and each of these attributes provides individual areas of interest to help guide the responses, although deviations of responses from the guide are certainly acceptable. The reader can elect not to respond to all the attributes in question.

(U) The following information is requested for each attribute:

• What technologies would support the desired capability?

• Describe any product or research project that embodies the technology.

• Assuming customers will desire reconfigurability and extensibility, what research issues are you pursuing to enable this?

• What is the current state of development for the technology being described (research, in development, prototype, beta test, on market)?

• Are there any regulatory barriers or reliability issues with the adoption of such technology?

• In what timeframe will the capability be available?

Attribute 1:

(U) Size, Weight, and Power (SWAP) - a light weight, handheld form-factor cognitive radio with an objective of less than 60 cubic inches in volume; system battery management that extends operator use

Attribute 2:

(U) Radio Frequency Range – a wideband system capable of supporting multi-band operations without changing out hardware or transceivers when moving across the frequency spectrum

Attribute 3:

(U) Hardware/Frequency agility – maintain ability for hardware to support in- and out-of-band wideband sensing while simultaneously operating across multiple frequency bands

Attribute 4:

(U) Network support - support 40 nodes simultaneously in the same network; radio devices autonomously communicate/propagate topology, sensed interference, countermeasure(s), etc.

Attribute 5:

(U) Waveform(s) – waveforms that are inherently mutable or can be precisely controlled through an API to improve performance based on environment, topology, telemetry, etc.; or multiple waveforms to achieve similar functionality

Attribute 6:

(U) Interference response – an integrated mechanism that identifies and classifies interference, derives network restoration strategy, and implements network restoration response

Attribute 7:

(U) Learning capability – cohesive ability to recognize, retain, and cogitate previous interference responses/strategies to better classify interference and reduce cognitive radio processor requirements

Attribute 8:

(U) Reasoning – network inference of countermeasure strategies from actions previously taken and existing measurements (e.g., real-time analysis of EMS, network, and radio telemetry, etc.)

Attribute 9:

(U) Encryption – ability to support certified commercial encryption algorithms

Attribute 10:

(U) Traffic types – solution that supports voice and position location information (without the need for a continuous Global Positioning System signal) while in a congested and contested

EMS environment; as interference decreases, ability to autonomously increase user throughput

Attribute 11:

(U) Operations – system that can manage diverse field/terrain conditions while running in mobile and dismount operations