DARPA has tapped BAE Systems to produce a new machine learning-powered tool that allows for the rapid deciphering of unique radio frequency signals, the company said Monday.
BAE Systems has received a potential $4.7 million deal to build a hardware platform that will use the data-driven algorithms it has been developing over the last year for DARPA’s Radio Frequency Machine Learning Systems (RFMLS) program.
“RFMLS requires a robust, adaptable hardware solution with a multitude of control surfaces to enable improved discrimination of signals in the evolving dense spectrum environments of the future,” company officials wrote in a statement. “This capability has never before been available in a hardware solution.”
The new Controllable Hardware Integration for Machine-learning Enabled Real-time Adaptivity (CHIMERA) hardware tool is intended to provide a reconfigurable platform that will allow users to decipher radio frequency signals and improve detection of adversaries’ jamming and signal disruption attacks.
“CHIMERA brings the flexibility of a software solution to hardware,” Dave Logan, BAE Systems’ general manager of C4ISR systems, said in a statement. “Machine-learning is on the verge of revolutionizing signals intelligence technology, just as it has in other industries.”
BAE Systems said last November it had received a $9.2 million deal from DARPA to develop the algorithms that will now be integrated on CHIMERA (Defense Daily, Nov. 28 2018).
The latest deal with DARPA covers hardware delivery of the CHIMERA tool, as well as integration and demonstration support.