ROME, N.Y. — The Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate (AFRL/RI) has awarded a $5.4 million high-assurance waveform capability (HAWC) research and development contract to ANDRO Computational Solutions, LLC.

The goal of the pact is to further advance the state-of-the-art in true-software-based waveform development for enhancing software-defined radio communications, networking, interoperability, and security, the company says.

“The contract builds upon our ongoing efforts to help the Air Force propel innovations in true software-based waveform development and in the growth of the government’s software waveform ecosystem to support the warfighters’ needs,” ANDRO President Andrew Drozd said in a statement. “HAWC waveform technologies represent the tip of the spear in advancing communications technologies for military and commercial radio manufacturers and their products.”

ANDRO’s HAWC significantly reduces the time and cost to generate validated digital-communications waveforms for the rapid field deployment of military radio platforms. Ashwin Amanna, chief scientist-research sector, will lead the work at ANDRO’s Heisenberg Lab.

ANDRO works with large defense, aerospace, and commercial companies interested in leveraging the HAWC capability to enhance their radio-communication product lines and production services. The Rome–based company is expanding its research and development activities to serve its growing clientele base.

“This has been an exciting program to support because of the combination of hands-on engineering and meeting a real mission need,” Amanna said. “We get to work with the latest in off-the-shelf computer technology and see direct increases in our waveform capability. For the warfighter to succeed in a rapidly changing spectrum battlefield, we have to break the current dependency between the waveform and the hardware. It takes too long to implement waveforms let alone adapt them quickly.”

With its True-Soft waveform development approach, ANDRO is accomplishing data rates and implementing complex waveforms in software today that was thought impossible just 10 years ago, he added.

ANDRO provides research, engineering, and technical services to defense and commercial industries in the areas of advanced spectrum exploitation, secure wireless communications, software-based waveform development, cognitive software-defined radio networking, multisensory data fusion, and sensor resource management.

The Air Force Research Laboratory is the primary scientific research and development center for the U.S. Air Force.