The U.S. and its military allies rely on GPS for navigation of high-value assets, but the technology is quite vulnerable to jamming and other interference. Teams in the military-communications industry are looking at solutions including machine learning (ML) and alternative navigation systems that are less susceptible to disruption.

An ongoing project intends to enable military and other scientists to monitor and even enhance the ways in which a soldier’s brain sleeps and, importantly, attains rest and repair. The effort – a collaboration between the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC) Military Operational Medicine Research Program (MOMRP) and scientists and engineers at Rice University (Houston, Texas) – is only one of a group of sensor-driven military projects seeking to create wearable technology to track and improve soldier performance and outcomes.

For more than ten years, the educational, industrial, and hobbyist markets have embraced the small-form-factor Raspberry Pi single-board computer (SBC) as a preferred low-cost, low-power tool that lowers the barrier for deploying intelligence and connectivity just about anywhere that imagination directs. The result is a ubiquitous platform, with more than 45 million units sold. Today, these tiny cards are helping to make the Internet of Things (IoT) concept a reality.

Fifth-generation networks, known as 5G, offer extensive wireless services with even faster data rates to come for such uses as military and mission-critical communications, enhanced mobile broadband, and the massive Internet of Things (IoT). Most of the systems to date have been based on signals below 6 GHz. Once network coverage has been achieved at higher millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequencies of 24 GHz and higher, 5G networks will support multigigabit upload and download speeds. Distributed network coverage at those higher frequencies will require many small cells with printed circuit boards (PCBs) capable of RF, microwave, mmWave, and high-speed digital (HSD) operation. Those small cells will demand PCB materials with high performance and reliability through mmWave frequencies, and with characteristics well suited to the operating environments of both indoor and outdoor 5G small cells.

It’s hard to escape the headlines around the Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA), open standards, and individual initiatives such as those from The Open Group FACE Consortium, the creators of the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) Technical Standard. In 2004, the Open Systems Task Force published a Program Manager Guide titled “A Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) to Acquisition.” Since then, the industry has seen a progression in policy guidance that raised the profile of MOSA and its applicability within military systems to enable success on the battlefield while lowering acquisition costs and promoting innovation.

Almost every part of our modern economy depends on the Global Positioning System, or GPS. For example, agriculture, construction, mining, rail transportation, and search and rescue all rely on the accurate position, navigation, and timing (PNT) enabled by GPS. An even broader set of industries – communications networks, banking transactions, financial markets, and power grids – rely on GPS for precise time synchronization, to such an extent that most systems would cease working without it. Alternative navigation (ALTNAV) systems can supplement GPS systems in GPS-denied environments using internal clocks and onboard sensors, and those ALTNAV systems should be protected from cyberattacks as well.

This article reviews the strengths and weaknesses of two electronic beamforming techniques: phase shifters (PSs) and true time delays (TTDs). It argues that these two methods can be combined in a hybrid beamforming architecture to offer better SWaP-C and a comparatively less complex system design.