Spectrum challengeSpectrum Challenge: more robust, resilient, reliable radio communications
Reliable wireless communications today requires careful allocation of specific portions of the electromagnetic spectrum to individual radio networks. While pre-allocating spectrum is effective in benign environments, radios remain vulnerable to inadvertent interference from other emitters and intentional jamming by adversaries. On 19-20 March 2014, fifteen teams from around the country demonstrated new ways to help overcome these challenges by participating in the final event of the DARPA Spectrum Challenge — a national competition to develop advanced radio techniques capable of communicating in congested and contested electromagnetic environments without direct coordination or spectrum preplanning.
Three teams take home prizes for innovative software techniques designed to enable radios automatically to sense and adapt to congested and contested electromagnetic environments.
Reliable wireless communications today requires careful allocation of specific portions of the electromagnetic spectrum to individual radio networks. While pre-allocating spectrum is effective in benign environments, radios remain vulnerable to inadvertent interference from other emitters and intentional jamming by adversaries.
DARPA says that on 19-20 March 2014, fifteen teams from around the country demonstrated new ways to help overcome these challenges by participating in the final event of the DARPA Spectrum Challenge— a national competition to develop advanced radio techniques capable of communicating in congested and contested electromagnetic environments without direct coordination or spectrum preplanning. After two intense days of competition, teams from Tennessee Technological University and Georgia Tech Research Institute and an independent team of individuals emerged as the overall winners, earning a total of $150,000 in prize money.
“The sophistication of the solutions that the teams developed really impressed us,” said Yiftach Eisenberg, DARPA program manager. “The teams showed that radios can learn to coexist and communicate reliably by autonomously sensing and adapting to congested electromagnetic environments — paving the way for new spectrum-sharing applications for the Department of Defense and commercial industry.”
The final event took place at DARPA’s offices in Arlington, Virginia. Eighteen teams had previously participated in the Spectrum Challenge preliminary event in September 2013. Three teams that participated in the preliminaries were unable to complete their ambitious designs in time for the final event. The competitors at the final event represented the top fifteen teams out of the ninety teams that initially registered. Academic institutions from around the country comprised twelve of the fifteen teams, while the remaining three teams were individual radio hobbyists and practitioners working on their own time.
