On May 20th, 2021, Virginia Tech Applied Research Corporation (VT-ARC) demonstrated its efforts in integrating innovative 5G wireless research into the 5G network architecture for the U.S. Marine Corps Logistics Base (MCLB) Albany, GA – one of several investments by Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD/R&E)) to expedite DoD 5G Strategy. An agile, collaborative team of academic and industry partners led by VT-ARC successfully showed how its recent development will realize cyber security resiliency, improved position accuracy, low latency updates and energy efficient communications of 5G User Equipment (UE) and Internet of Things (IoT) devices within an efficient, secure smart warehouse.
Through VT-ARC’s unique industry and academic partnership, experts in mobile communications, wireless networking, and systems engineering worked together to advance cutting-edge radio positioning and communications technologies in exciting new ways to overcome the challenges facing indoor IoT devices such as weak signals, interference, small antenna size, low battery life, and more. Several departments from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), B3 Advanced Communications, George Mason University, Intelligent Automation Inc., Keysight Technologies, Old Dominion University, Perspecta Labs, the University of Virginia, and Virginia Commonwealth University showed how their recent research advancements in the field of wireless signal processing and 5G will lead to warehouse prototype capabilities. Each of these academic partners are members of the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI), a highly connected network of higher education, industry and government partners coordinated by the hub at Virginia Tech to establish Virginia as a global center of excellence for cyber security research, innovation, and workforce development. The CCI 5G Testbed Hub provided a live 5G lab demonstration at its hub in the Virginia Tech Research Center (VTRC), Arlington, VA illustrating its integrated role in the collaborative effort to help advance the fundamental technologies in the capabilities.
VT-ARC successfully brought together this highly collaborative and trusted team of partners, displaying its valuable role in bringing research and engineering to enable the critical innovations of tomorrow. Future demonstrations to OUSD(R&E) proposed for late 2021 and 2022 will highlight further evolutions of development for integration into the MCLB Albany.
For more information about the DoD 5G Strategy and ongoing efforts, visit www.cto.mil/5G. For more information about VT-ARC and 5G research, visit https:// vt-arc.org.