On April 18, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced the awards for the Resilient and Intelligent NextG Systems program, which officially kicked off on June 27. This initiative brings together the public and private sectors in hopes of developing collaborative relationships for the Department of Defense.
As a matter of fact, the RINGS program is actually the most significant effort put forth by the NSF, to date, aimed at engaging academic, industry, and government partners through joint research projects. The program focuses on accelerating research, in particularly, which leads to more attentive innovation that will increase the competitiveness of the US in the global Next5 networking and computing industries. For this, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering’s Innovative Beyond 5G program (IB5G) has already contributed $6 million towards the more than $37 million awarded among the 41 research projects.
According to IB5G Program Director Dr. Sumit Roy, “The Department of Defense has a vital interest in promoting the continuous adoption and adaption of advanced wireless technologies as it seeks to integrate these within the evolution of MIL Network concepts.”
Indeed, the US Department of Defense regards the aforementioned partnership as a key factor in the much larger mission of including the academic and non-profit research communities in their efforts. These contributions aid in the development of important, new solutions that could address various critical operational priorities as well as a host of communication challenges. For this project, private sector partners include technology bigwigs like Apple, Google, Intel, IBM, and Microsoft. Ericsson, Vmware, Nokia, and Qualcomm are also involved.
Dr. Roy goes on to say, “The 5G-to-NextG initiative is particularly pleased to support efforts such as RINGS that promote public and private sector collaboration in continuing research, development, and prototyping that emphasize secure and resilient network operational concepts and their evaluation.”
