DARPA will host a Proposers’ Day Workshop in support of a Control-Based Mobile Ad-Hoc Networking program on August 30, 2005 at Crystal City Marriott, 1999 Jefferson Davis Highway, Arlington, VA beginning at 8:30am and lasting until 5:00pm. The purpose of this Conference is to provide information on the Control-Based Mobile Ad-Hoc Networking program, promote additional discussion on this topic, address questions from potential proposers, and provide a forum for potential proposers to present their capabilities for teaming opportunities. It is anticipated that a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for the program will be released prior to the conference. The Control-Based Mobile Ad-Hoc Networking (CBMANET) program will design, develop, and demonstrate a Mobile Ad-hoc NETwork (MANET) based on a tabula rasa rethinking of wireless network architecture inclusive of distributed adaptive control mechanisms, cross-layer protocols tailored for wireless tactical environments, and reformulated network layering abstractions as warranted. The result will be a novel and advantageous MANET that dramatically improves performance from the end user’s perspective for at least the following three reasons. First, a control-based network will more effectively allocate wireless network resources to meet user goals and operator constraints. Ideally these goals and constraints will be explicitly characterized in the form of a dynamically tunable objective function that reflects the network designer/planner’s purpose and guides distributed cross-layer network adaptation. Examples of relevant goals and operational constraints include aggregate application utility maximization, resource availability, fairness, connectivity, quality of service assurance, mission-adaptive multi-level precedence and priority, and the desired network operating regime concerning probability of jamming, intercept, or detection. Second, novel protocols suitable for wireless networking will be employed independent of historical constraints motivated by today’s dominant networking paradigms. In particular, the CBMANET protocols will exploit cross-layer interactions in order to more effectively support tactically relevant network applications. Typical traffic loads are characterized by prioritized content, deadline-sensitive messaging, and a heavy emphasis on multicast. Third, conventional network layering principles will be reconsidered to more effectively enable cross-layer interactions and to better modularize user concerns such as latency, capacity, energy, fairness, and priority. The remodularized stack will provide interfaces and hooks tailored to support the distributed adaptive control mechanism in the spirit of “design for manageability”. DARPA anticipates that major BAA topic areas will include distributed adaptive network control (potentially drawing on advances in convex optimization, optimization decomposition, economically inspired algorithms, distributed constraint satisfaction, model finding, game theory, mechanism design, machine learning, cognitive systems, stigmergic and biologically inspired systems, and/or multiagent systems) as well as cross-layer network design (inclusive of information-theoretic innovations, jointly designed protocol sets, novel separations of concern, and the principled exposure of control and feedback parameters to enable effective distributed control). DARPA anticipates that the early research focus will concern networking and network control algorithms and protocols rather than hardware and physical-layer concerns; however, proposals would be expected to highlight any relevant physical-layer dependencies and constraints. In later phases, DARPA would anticipate a series of demonstrations and experiments with representative hardware using the algorithms and protocols developed in early phase(s). Also, DARPA anticipates that the scope of the program will not extend to the design of security mechanisms; however, proposers would be expected to consider the security implications of their designs. DARPA currently plans to solicit proposals for the full scope of the problem – an end-to-end system that is designed by a multidisciplinary research team with coordination and implementation support from an integrator. DARPA may also accept more narrowly focused technology maturation proposals that have a potential to dramatically enhance the end-to-end systems. DARPA anticipates that the Control-Based Mobile Ad-Hoc Networking program will be supported with 6.2 funding, and that the project will be unclassified. REGISTRATION INFORMATION Participants must register NLT 19 August 2005, at the following website: https://enstg.com/signup/passthru.cfm?ConferenceCode=CON34423. Directions to the facility and other materials are also available on the website. The CBMANET Industry Day registration fee of $70.00 may be submitted on-line via secure credit card transaction or by cash/check/charge during sign-in on the day of the conference. The Proposers’ Day will be unclassified and open to all potential bidders. The Proposers Day is voluntary. Attendance is not required to propose to this BAA. Due to limitations of the conference facility attendance is limited. All US Citizens are required to fill out a US Citizenship Verification form in order to attend this conference (permanent residents will be required to complete and submit DARPA Form 60 “Foreign National Visit Request”). These documents should be faxed (Attention: Pamela Jackson) to 703-696-9781 prior to the meeting. Additionally, attendees who would like to present company overviews, discuss their technology expertise, and/or discuss teaming opportunities in scheduled presentations at the conference may request to do so. Presentations may contain 2-4 slides and are limited to five (5) minutes each (including logistical issues). Proposers desiring to reserve a time to present at the Proposers’ Day Conference should contact Pamela Jackson at
[email protected] as soon as possible, but no later than the registration cutoff date for the Proposers’ Day Conference. All material to be displayed at the conference must be must be approved in advance by both the organization that funded the research and the DARPA program manager, Mr. J. Christopher Ramming. The DARPA Program Manager will screen the proposed material for sensitive, but unclassified material and approve in advance any presentations. It is the presenter’s responsibility to ensure that all material they plan to present at the Control-Based Mobile Ad-Hoc Networking Proposers’ Day Conference has been approved by the funding organization in advance. The Control-Based Mobile Ad-Hoc Networking Proposers’ Day Conference will be open to the public. An electronic copy of all material to be presented must be provided to the DARPA Program Manager for review by August 19, 2005. There will be no exceptions to this requirement. DO NOT CONTACT THE CONTRACTING OFFICER IDENTIFIED BELOW WITH RESPECT TO THIS PROPOSER’S DAY ANNOUNCEMENT. ALL INQUIRIES SHOULD BE DIRECTED AS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED HEREIN.