
DARPA challange: Can you program a radio to dominate the spectrum?  - cr4zy
http://www.darpa.mil/NewsEvents/Releases/2012/12/20.aspx
======
rdl
I thought the challenge was "can you waste billions of dollars over decades
and keep 30 year old radios in the field, stalling all progress", handily won
by JTRS.

(This is somewhat sour grapes, but JTRS really was one of the worst run
programs in the history of the military. It got lapped by commercial SDR 2-3
times, and then, because it was the "program of record" for radios, went out
of its way to block deployment of other radio systems in Iraq/Afghanistan. The
USMC eventually was able to deploy their own hacked up wifi + satellite system
in spite of this, and the Army, etc. switched to a bunch of commercial radios.
Due to JTRS, though, there was a period where people were actually using FRS,
those unencrypted short-range things, for military use.)

[http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/how-
to...](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/how-to-
blow-6-billion-on-a-tech-project/)

~~~
rayiner
I'll jump on the JTRS hate bandwagon! One of my first jobs as a programmer was
working on a JTRS/SCA CORBA-based platform. It was the first time the phrase
"a camel is a horse designed by committee" really sunk in.

~~~
rdl
I think I actually know people who died due to cincgars vs other radio
incompatibility. :(

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unoti
Something similar and very interesting that's used by ham radio operators
every day: Automatic Link Exchange[1]. The system dynamically monitors many
different frequencies (which have different propagation characteristics) to
determine the best way for two parties to communicate, and automatically makes
the connection. This is different from what DARPA needs, but still somewhat
similar and definitely interesting. It's also one of the newer things in ham
radio that a lot of hams don't know about.

1\. <http://hflink.com/alehamradio/>

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DanBC
A direct link to the actual challenge, with more information.

(<http://www.darpa.mil/spectrumchallenge/>)

> _Can you engineer software-based radios that transmit data faster than a
> competitor using identical hardware?_

The [rules], [q&a], and [register] tabs are not clickable yet. I guess this is
going to be more interesting when we know what the rules actually are. What
kind of traffic and 'jamming' are you competing against? What frequencies are
available to you?

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pbateman
This strikes me as a much better idea than the standard process of awarding a
cost-plus contract to a military contractor and then watching as costs blow
out.

~~~
rayiner
I'd reserve judgment until something actually comes out of it... More
generally, "prize funding" isn't a practical mechanism for building real
defense projects. Nobody who knows what they are doing will incur huge capital
costs for a mere chance at some prize money.

~~~
michaelt
The 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge [1], a self-driving-car competition, was
extremely successful. Winning entrants spent far more than the prize of $2
million - predominantly funded by sponsorship from companies interested in
self-driving vehicle technology.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge>

~~~
rayiner
Not a great example. A lot of the work on DARPA grand challenge was done by
universities, which as a group are heavily funded by the federal government.

~~~
michaelt
As I understand it most university projects don't get much cash from the
university itself. In general STEM research is funded by grant
money/sponsorship from industry that academics raise themselves. Often it's
the academic/research group that then pays the university!

Admittedly the two leading teams did have a bunch of undergraduate students
working on them, which offsets their labor costs - and the univesity usually
supplies some resources.

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evilsquelch9
The us military already has this. I wonder what would happen if someone
brought HAVEQUICK to the contest? I might actually consider doing this to see
if it wins. <http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAVE_QUICK>

~~~
krenoten
The winner will probably employ a similar hopping technique combined with
"chirping" to transmit condensed bursts and phase modulation to better evade
jamming.

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mooneater
Pushing the envelope in RRM?
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_resource_management> If anyone has links
to info on the best currently known designs, please share.

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nimeshneema
> Any U.S. academic institution, business, or individual, is eligible to
> compete, with certain restrictions.

Any reason why it isn't open to people outside of USA ?

~~~
JoachimSchipper
Presumably, because DARPA is funded by tax dollars and it would be
embarrassing to have these go overseas; also, because the military may want to
hire the people who made this, and getting a high security clearance for
foreigners is a headache.

~~~
siscia
That still is a very very bad reason to don't "use" engineers outside the US

~~~
frozenport
Sounds like a good reason to me 1\. Security 2\. DARPA exists for the US, and
for US tax payers. I pay taxes to employ Americans, not Indians.

What would be a good reason?

~~~
nkurz
Perhaps any engineers you employ are less likely to be employed by your
enemies? It seems proven that greater trade between countries reduces risk of
war, and employment might follow the same pattern.

Also, quite possible that your research money goes farther. If this produces
greater progress per dollar, this might create greater security. But this
might depend on whether you are developing offensive or defensive tools.

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kitsune_
I propose this thing:
[http://www.vtg.admin.ch/internet/vtg/de/home/verbaende/fub/f...](http://www.vtg.admin.ch/internet/vtg/de/home/verbaende/fub/fubr41/meine/ekf2/photos.NewWindow.parsys.1381.4.Preview.html)

------
archgoon
So, if I'm interested in getting started in software radio, can anyone
recommend what I need to get started?

I'm checking this out now

<http://gnuradio.org/>

Any recommendations for hardware? Do I need to get a Ham Radio License?

~~~
j_s
Primer on Cheap Software Defined Radios

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4861199>

------
Zenst
To dominate a radio spectrum usualy ends up with who has the strongest
transmitter.

BUT in todays digital age and more refined tunning of radio's into more
decimal places. Then I believe the following approach would be the best
approach for less power.

Pick your target spectrum range, Then using a highpower transmitter higher
powered than the other as above to do a very granular spectrum hopping around
the spectrum but at least transmitting on every channel within that spectrum
at a period of frequency that would be greater than normal error corrected
interferance by that your signal would then cover the spectrum range alocated
but instead of having to do a wide band of the entire spectrum you are picking
channels (by channels I mean frequency range that is not interfeared with by
either side as you can have a transmission on wifi say that is on channel 3
and can be picked up faintly if your on channel 1, bad example but you should
follow what I'm meaning by channel in this case of a spectrum block) at a time
interval that would exceed error correction and as such rendering others use
of the channel extreemly hard and with that all channels in the defined
frequency range, aka spectrum.

Now by doing that you would need the least amount of power to block others use
of that spectrum and at the same time have a very wide albeit spectrum hopping
chunk of bandwith to use and abuse and the faster you make the spectrum
hopping to break error handerling of others trying to use that range.

Of course with that approach you would have details to work on like frequency
channels and how granular you defined those and also the level of error
correction you wish to defeat. Remember if you want to compete with others
digital transmissions then this is great BUT with analogue it may very well be
a case that somebody talking would still be understandable with the level of
interfearance. A look at signal type and how it would be analoguely(sic)
interpreted is one aspect that may effect how you encode your data as you may
end up disrupting the receaving speaker enough to impeede the other signals
sound transmision. There is also the aspect of how long you stay on a channel
at certain frequencies with some needing longer than others to transmit
something usable and the fun of recieving the signal out of step as different
frequencies propergate(travel) at different rates(speed) so that would cause
out of step reception, though easily countered if your aware of that design
aspect.

NOW there is a far far easier way and sadly I don't think it is what I would
calla hacker approach and is more the script-kiddie solution. That would be to
send a silly large pulse on the frequency so strong that it blows all the
transmitters. Now you would need to inform your chaps ahead so they could
switch of and fold there areils in half type of thing ahead of your radio nuke
or more a radio DOS attack. Then they could setup ready afterwards and you
would of blown all other recievers and with that the only people who can
listern are those you want to listern. Not elegant, but certainly a partial
solution that would be cheap to implement as it is that crude, hence not what
I call a pure hacker solution. I also suspect the amount of power to do this
would exceed the prize money being offered, so you would be pushed and indeed
insane to build and test such an approach.

