The Agency’s Steering Board has given its green light to the launch of a new EDA research project which aims to improve and harden Armed Forces’ communication and radar systems with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to make them more resilient, even in contested electronic warfare environments. Three Member States - Germany, the Netherlands, Poland – will participate in the project.
Armed Forces’ radiocommunication and radiolocation services are faced with increasing challenges: the spectrum is becoming denser and more users are contending for limited frequency bandwidth, while the risk of interference is increasing. In addition to that, scenarios are becoming more and more dynamic with mobile high-speed communication, highly agile targets, and electronic warfare methods that are much more efficient than simple noise jamming.
Cognitive systems supported by AI technologies are a promising option to harden the equipment against such interferences as cognitive radios and radars have the capability to respond to dynamically changing environments. This allows them to offer stable communication based on optimal utilisation of radio frequency spectrum by sensing free spectrum availability and minimizing interference between users, e.g. managing reliable communication dynamically.
EDA’s new project, called ‘Communications and Radar Systems hardened with Artificial Intelligence in a contested electronic warfare environment’ (CRAI), will produce a study which will significantly help to make progress in the use of AI-supported cognitive systems for the benefit of military communications and radar systems. More precisely, the study notably aims to:
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investigate future military scenarios and use cases for relevant communication and radar systems, where cognitive methods, combined with AI, offer potential operational benefits;
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identify potential new communication disturbance based on the past experiences;
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review and adapt AI methodologies for spectrum Situational Awareness and surveillance;
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specify the requirements for the common cognitive system acting in contested electronic warfare environments;
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analyse potential AI techniques that could be used for cognitive communications and radars;
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design and implement cognitive techniques combined with AI for both communication and radar systems using common interfaces;
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do the testing, verification and evaluation of AI based communications and radar concepts;
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and verify, validate and demonstrate the test system in a (field) exercise.
The project is expected to last for 36 months, starting with the signing of the project arrangement expected to take place in 2021. It will also involve a number of European defence industry players active in the communications and radar domain.