Raytheon radio terminals demonstrate SRW

Raytheon has announced that it new class of airborne and ground radio terminals have demonstrated the Soldier Radio Waveform (SRW), marking a key milestone in the radio’s progress through the Department of Defense's (DoD’s) Joint Tactical Networking Center's (JTNC) certification process for waveform conformance.

According to the company, the demonstration saw users able to send voice and data traffic between Raytheon's terminal and another soldier radio running SRW.

The radio systems are designed to provide soldiers with another way to communicate across disparate networks. In addition to SRW, Raytheon's tactical radios already have the Next Generation Mobile Ad Hoc Networking Waveform (NMW), specifically designed to run on lower cost, reduced size and lower power-consumption radios, while delivering wideband networking capability.

Raytheon's airborne radios are integrated on helicopters and unmanned aircraft. The ground radio system is called MAINGATE, or Mobile Ad Hoc Interoperability Network Gateway. It is targeted for the US Army's mid-tier network, for which it is under evaluation at this year's Network Integration Evaluation (NIE) at Fort Bliss, Texas. MAINGATE, with NMW, has been in operational use with deployed forces for more than two years.

According to the company, the latest radios are capable of running narrowband and networking waveforms as well as the future Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) waveform from the JTNC library. Raytheon recently provided its NMW into this same repository to facilitate interoperability with MAINGATE.

Scott Whatmough vice president of Integrated Communication Systems in Raytheon's Network Centric Systems business, said: ‘The SRW demonstration was a key milestone and positions Raytheon to leverage its common radio architecture in our next generation ground and airborne radios. The demonstration underscores Raytheon's commitment to advanced multi-waveform Software Defined Radios, providing interoperability to the warfighter.’