Centre fast-tracks project for secured radio communication for armed forces

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has fast-tracked the indigenisation of Software Defined Radios (SDRs) to fulfill the increasing demand by the Armed Forces across a broad spectrum of operations.

The complete product life cycle management framework is necessary for security sensitive SDR technology and products. It involves indigenous self-sustainable design, development, manufacturing, testing, certification and maintenance ecosystem.

Defence Secretary Ajay Kumar, while giving high priority to the indigenisation of SDR technology, stated that it will be an important milestone towards achieving in the field of secured radio communication.

Two key elements of indigenous SDR technology are the standardised operating software environment (OE) and applications known as waveforms with associated waveforms repository and test/certification facility. Standard OE enables waveform portability and interoperability among SDRs of multiple vendors. Towards this, the Ministry of Defence has taken a decision to define and develop a reference implementation of India specific operating environment called India Software Communication Architecture (SCA) profile or Indian Radio Software Architecture.

The three institutions involved in the development namely, DEAL/DRDO, IIT-Kanpur and DoS have already started the work as per DPR.

Defence Secretary Ajay Kumar said, it will create a new benchmark towards indigenisation of critical equipment which, so far, has been imported and reduce import budget and create a secured radio network for the Armed Forces.