Work to Continue on RF Resource Manager for UAVs

By Mike Ball / 31 Oct 2020
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DARPA CONCERTO program

Perspecta Labs has been awarded a contract to work on phase 3 of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA’s) Converged Collaborative Elements for radio frequency (RF) Task Operations (CONCERTO) program. CONCERTO, which has already completed phase 2 implementation and demonstration, aims to develop a converged RF resource manager that adaptively controls components of radar, electronic warfare and communications functions on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

During phase 2 testing of CONCERTO, Perspecta Labs’ RF resource manager significantly outperformed conventional resource management techniques during complex scenarios. The technology provided enhanced communications throughput, reduced tracking errors and vastly improved decision speeds — achieving 100% of mission objectives during these scenarios.

Perspecta Labs’ scalable, extensible solution uses advanced machine learning techniques to meet stringent, real-time performance requirements and achieve complex objectives. It provides management across multiple payloads on a single UAV platform, and supports cross-platform distributed battle management applications to enable mission success.

The Phase 3 work will further mature and advance Perspecta Labs’ RF resource manager, including management of diverse third-party RF payload hardware. The company will also demonstrate the capability, scalability and agility of its solution in flight tests on a UAV, in order to enable technology adoption by other programs of record. The additional contract modification supports a six-month effort to develop distributed extensions of the solution.

Petros Mouchtaris, Ph.D., president of Perspecta Labs, commented: “Perspecta Labs’ RF resource manager changes the paradigm of UAV performance by bringing better, faster, more accurate command and control to warfighters while providing the critical RF dominance needed by the U.S. military to ensure operational success. We are excited to mature and demonstrate our solution on UAVs to meet multi-function needs, support multi-platform operations and achieve distributed battle management objectives.”

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Posted by Mike Ball Mike Ball is our resident technical editor here at Unmanned Systems Technology. Combining his passion for teaching, advanced engineering and all things unmanned, Mike keeps a watchful eye over everything related to the unmanned technical sector. With over 10 years’ experience in the unmanned field and a degree in engineering, Mike’s been heading up our technical team here for the last 8 years. Connect & Contact