BBN Technologies Awarded $12.9 Million in Defense Funding To Develop Highly Efficient, Low-Power Radio Communications For The Battlefield.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- BBN Technologies, a leading advanced technology and research and development firm, announced today that it has been awarded $12.9M by the Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). This funding is for the second and third phases of the Connectionless Networks program, which aims to drastically reduce the amount of energy required for mesh or ad hoc networking and communication.

In the second phase, BBN will develop working prototypes based on its technology concepts presented to DARPA in the first phase of the project. In phase one, BBN was able to reduce the energy used for delivering information in a tactical wireless multi-hop network by over 300 times. Working field units will be manufactured and deployed in the third phase, which begins in June 2006.

BBN's ability to reduce the amount of energy required for data networking will result in battery powered radios working hundreds of times longer. Furthermore, limiting energy requirements will potentially reduce the amount of money spent on purchasing and replacing batteries while increasing military effectiveness due to fewer concerns about how long batteries will last.

"When carrying a radio on a mission, two of the top concerns soldiers have are how much the radio battery weighs and how long will the battery last," said Jason Redi, division scientist at BBN Technologies. "Most networking systems are designed to transmit lots of data all the time, which makes them very inefficient and relatively power hungry when there isn't as much traffic to send. We are working on methods that are designed from the start to be efficient under all traffic loads, and adapt as things change on the battlefield."

The low-duty radio multi-hop networking schemes designed by BBN will one day lead to smaller batteries with increased battery life for use in battlefield communications devices. These devices range from data-collecting sensors placed in remote locations to radios used by soldiers to communicate with each other. More efficient networking and communications protocols will allow remote sensors to transmit important information over longer durations and allow soldiers to carry fewer batteries and replace them less frequently during missions.

This contract award comes on the heels of several new contract wins from DARPA. The projects for which BBN Technologies has been selected include: Force Multipliers for Urban Area Operations; Persistent, Robust 3-D All-Source Target Tracking Using Multistatic, Broadband Radar in Urban Combat Zones; and Social and Cultural Analysis and Learning Environment for Urban Pre- and Post-Conflict Operations.

About BBN Technologies

BBN Technologies, an advanced technology and research and development firm, is focused on solving some of the world's most pressing problems. From national security, information security, speech recognition and language translation, to integrating disparate systems and networks, BBN has been at the forefront of technological change for over 50 years.

Known for pioneering the development of the ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet, BBN continues to create advances in Internet and networking technologies through its work on ad-hoc networking, the semantic web, quantum communications, and advanced protocols. Building on its substantial list of firsts, BBN operates the first metro quantum cryptography network, the first real-time foreign broadcast monitoring system, and has developed the world's first stereoscopic digital mammography system. For more information, visit bbn.com