FY27 Communications and Networking Applied Research Announcement for Office of Naval Research

The purpose of this announcement is to focus attention of the scientific community on (1) the area to be studied, and (2) the planned timetable for the submission of white papers and full proposals.

The goal of the Communications and Networking Program within the Office of Naval Research (ONR 311) is to support the Navy's Information Warfare vision by developing measurable advances in technology that can directly enable and enhance end-to-end connectivity and quality-of-service for mission-critical information exchange among widely dispersed naval, joint, and coalition forces. The vision is to provide high throughput robust communications and networking to ensure all warfighters – from the operational command to the tactical edge – have access to information, knowledge, and decision-making necessary to perform their assigned tasks. The ONR program is interested in white papers for potential FY27 Applied Research (Budget category 6.2) projects under the following focus areas:

1. Development of long-range VHF-band data link, using compact 4x4 Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output (MIMO) based on 5G/Commercial-Off-The Shelf (COTS) and sub-MHz frequency channelization (spectral efficiency in excess of 1 bit/Hz);
2. Novel design and prototyping of compact electronically-steered apertures for higher frequencies (i.e., above Ka-band);
3. Innovative approaches and technologies for low probability-of-detection communications against advanced electronic threats;
4. Advanced techniques for distributed network control, synchronization, and/or scheduling; and
5. New algorithms for predicting network behavior/performance or emerging operational requirements that are translated into traffic engineering policies.

The ONR is receptive to innovative ideas, which are not within the above focus areas, but nonetheless are important to the Navy/Marine Corps communications and networking, as otherwise described in this Topic Description