Cognitive radio vendor xG Technology scores Army contract

Cognitive radio company xG Technology announced a contract to deploy on a trial basis its xMax cognitive mobile network over a large part of the U.S. Army's Fort Bliss Desert Training areas in Texas and New Mexico.

The trial is being jointly sponsored by the U.S. Army Signal Center of Excellence and CERDEC, a supplier of advanced Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) capabilities, technologies and integrated solutions for the military. In addition to the Fort Bliss network deployment, the contract calls for xG to supply xMax network equipment for evaluation purposes to the Fort Monmouth, N.J. lab facility of CERDEC. CERDEC is also responsible for the transition of communications electronics technologies from research and development to U.S. Army and Department of Defense acquisition programs for procurement, fielding and sustainment.

"The U.S. Army's CERDEC is constantly evaluating new wireless technologies, and the fact that they believe that cognitive radio techniques have now matured enough to be considered as a viable option is not only good news for xG Technology, but also for better management of spectrum for all wireless customers moving forward," said Andrew Seybold, CEO and Principal Analyst of Andrew Seybold in a statement.

Under the terms of the contract, xG will install a comprehensive xMax network solution consisting of several xMax BSN-250 base stations, an xMSC mobile switching center and trial TX-70 handsets to allow the Army to utilize and evaluate xMax's capabilities as a wide-area and tactical cellular system at Fort Bliss. xG will provide training and ongoing maintenance support after the initial setup of the network to ensure seamless transition of operational responsibilities to Army support staff

xMax technology is now deployed in a test network encompassing 32 square miles in Florida and a smaller network in Arkansas. Several analysts, including Craig Mathias, principal with the Farpoint Group, confirm that the technology does work after witnessing the network in Florida.

xMax technology is a frequency-agile radio capable of detecting interference in real time, handing off from channel to channel 33 times a second, Rotondo said. Rather than looking at the frequency domain for interference, xMax also senses the time domain to slice the interference even further.

The company has so far designed its network for the unlicensed 900 MHz band where Part 15 devices operate.

For more:
- see this release

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xG searching for a market for its cognitive radio network that really works