RADIO OVER INTERNET PROTOCOL (ROIP)_RFI.pdf

UNCLASSIFIED

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

RADIO OVER INTERNET PROTOCOL(ROIP)

(U) The Government is requesting information on solutions for an enterprise radio distribution architecture to include Radio Over Internet Protocol (ROIP) management tools, ROIP clients, and associated audio capture software.

(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 cost 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 third party (support contractor) and (b) that submission of information in response to this RFI constitutes consent to disclosure of submitted information. The Government expects to have third party support during its review of RFI responses. Industry Partners (IP) who require a

Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) arrangement 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. The completed NDA will be promptly returned to the IP.

POC: Casey Nau

Email: casey.nau@gsa.gov

(U) NO phone calls and/or request for a Solicitation will be accepted or acknowledged. Company

Brochures are NOT desired.

(U) Technical questions regarding this RFI should be directed to Renee Grace (renee.grace@gsa.gov) and Casey Nau (casey.nau@gsa.gov) no later than (NLT) 11:00 a.m.

ET on February 12, 2024. Phone calls will not be accepted.

(U) The Government requests responses to this RFI to be submitted NLT February 20, 2024, at

3:00 PM ET. All interested parties should submit in writing (no more than 20 pages, single-spaced) their capabilities, experience, and familiarity with providing the services stated below.

Responses to identified capabilities should be clearly marked within the response with the ability to meet threshold and/or objective requirements clearly identified within the response. A response of ‘no’ or ‘not provided’ with the given architecture is an appropriate answer. The complete response to this RFI shall be 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 Casey Nau (casey.nau@gsa.gov) NLT 3:00 PM ET on February 20, 2024. Phone calls will not be accepted.

SCOPE:

(U) This request is for information only regarding the implementation, operation, and maintenance of an enterprise radio distribution architecture. Failure to identify a capability from the listed requirements will not be identified as a failure in another category. Collaboration may be possible between industry partners to provide an enterprise solution for radio distribution compatible with the Government’s existing IT architecture.

(U) The capability to distribute radio channels across existing IT architecture has become essential for modern military operations. Modern distribution networks should leverage containerization and microservices to efficiently scale up and down. Management should be centralized but allow for continued operation if a node is disconnected from the common data plane. Client applications should integrate with existing Identity Management infrastructure and provide automated configuration based on identity. Applications for the generation and archiving of audio and speech-to-text for the purposes of logging, dynamic translation, and text-to-speech are also of interest to the Government.

(U) The Government is requesting that responders address capabilities in four domains with respect to radio distribution: ROIP operation, management services, client applications, and audio capture/logging. Table 1 describes the desired capabilities in each of the four domains. The

Government understand that for listed capabilities, there may be no product that can deliver all of the described capability.

PURPOSE:

(U) The Government is requesting information on Radio Over IP applications to modernize its existing enterprise radio distribution architecture. This effort will support Special Operations Forces (SOF) through increased efficiencies in the deployment, operation, and management of their Radio Distribution needs.

TIMELINE:

(U) Phase 0 – Request for Information: ROIP RFI submitted to Industry January 17, 2024.

(U) Phase 1 – RFI Responses: Industry Partners with technology capabilities that potentially meet the areas of interest are encouraged to submit RFI responses NLT February 20, 2024. Note: The Government will respond to questions about the RFI that are provided to the Contracting Officer NLT February 12, 2024. All correspondence (questions and answers) will be by email to the Contracting Officer.

(U) Phase 2 – Immediate Post RFI Actions: RFI responses that were reviewed and determined to have the highest potential to satisfy the technology requirements for ROIP 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.

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

Table 1: Radio Over Internet Protocol Needs (Unclassified)

Radio Over Internet Protocol

Domain Attribute Performance Threshold Objective

Operations Compatibility

Compatible with standard ITU-T, MIL-

STD, and NATO audio codecs

G.711, G.729 support Support for installation of CODECs as required to support mission

ROIP Gateway agnostic. Deployment does not require hardware upgrades

Interoperable with existing ROIP architecture

T = O

Supports operation in denied, disadvantaged, intermittent, and limited environments

Minimum Network Conditions

Bitrate - 10 Mbit/s

Latency - 800ms

Adaptive bitrate control

Networking Protocol

Support

IPv4 supported

IPv6 capable

Unicast supported

Multicast supported

IPv4 supported

IPv6 supported

Unicast supported

Multicast supported

Supports Secure Transmission

TLS/SRTP/SDP/IPsec T = O

Management Server

Deployment

Serverless infrastructure providing high availability with load balancing

Hardware agnostic and

Virtualized server solution

Rapid network scaling up and down

Full functionality on SFF tactical servers

Containerized, micro-service solution compatible with industry container management platforms

Further development required to determine the objective number of deployed servers and concurrent channels.

Flexible license management

Create and share licenses for virtual machines and virtual appliances in a degraded or disconnected environment

Concurrent user licensing model

T = O

Management

Centralized management through a common data plane

Server cloning for rapid deployment

Support for failover between geographically diverse servers

Open API for automation

Capable of integration with SIEM tools

Sends Telemetry for real-time monitoring

Administration Create and manage voice channels

Dynamic discovery of channels, trunks, and address assignments

Support for multicast and unicast design

Management interface supporting custom views, queries, and grouping

T = O

Authentication PKI compliant platform

Allows downgrade to username and password

Support for Identity and

Access Management with

LDAP

Ability to assign channels by security group

Support for common identity management services

Client Application

Functionality

Supports multiple OS Windows, Android Linux, MacOS, iOS

Support for tactical plugins

Supports integration with tactical plugins T = O

Route channels to assigned speaker

Send channels to assigned speaker

T = O

Capable of operating disconnected

Operates on last known good state when connection to server has been lost

T = O

Authentication PKI compliant platform

Allows downgrade to username and password

Support for Identity and

Access Management with

LDAP

Ability to assign channels by security group

Support for common identity management services

Radio Over Internet Protocol

Domain Attribute Performance Threshold Objective

Capture Audio

Record Record and store radio voice traffic

Record and index from one or more channels

Profile based configuration

Store recorded audio on server and local client

Playback of recorded material in real time

Thirty minutes of playback available to client when operating in DIL environment

Support for tiered cloud storage of master recording

Transcribe Convert and store voice traffic as text

Transcribe audio into text

Supports for military language

Transcribe multiple channels into common log

Supports text log archiving in portable format

Profile based configuration

Transcribe audio into text in real-time

Translate text to speech

Support for tiered cloud storage of text

Translate Translate between spoken language

Translation of recorded audio using modular language plugins with on/off selectivity by user

Transcribe translated speech to text with on/off selectivity by user

Real-time translation of languages using modular plugins