Adaptive Cognition-Enhanced Radio Teams (ACERT)

The summary for the Adaptive Cognition-Enhanced Radio Teams (ACERT) grant is detailed below. This summary states who is eligible for the grant, how much grant money will be awarded, current and past deadlines, Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) numbers, and a sampling of similar government grants. Verify the accuracy of the data FederalGrants.com provides by visiting the webpage noted in the Link to Full Announcement section or by contacting the appropriate person listed as the Grant Announcement Contact. If any section is incomplete, please visit the website for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is the U.S. government agency offering this grant.

Adaptive Cognition-Enhanced Radio Teams (ACERT): A. Overview Information I. Federal Agency Name: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Information Processing Technology Office II. Funding Opportunity Title: Adaptive Cognition-Enhanced Radio Teams (ACERT) III. Announcement Type: Initial Broad Agency Announcement IV. Funding Opportunity Number: BAA 05-37 V. CFDA Number: 12.910 VI. Key Dates a. Initial Closing: 12:00 Noon (ET), May 26, 2005 b. Final Closing: 12:00 Noon (ET), April 11, 2006 c. All administrative correspondence and questions on this solicitation, including requests for information on how to submit a proposal to this BAA, must be received at one of the administrative addresses below by 12:00 Noon (ET) April 4, 2006 d. DARPA plans to hold a Proposer Day on May 2, 2005. Details can be found at http://www.schafertmd.com/acert B. Full text of announcement The DARPA Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO) is soliciting proposals to perform research, design, development and integration to support the Adaptive Cognition Enhanced Radio Teams (ACERT) Program. The ACERT Program will develop fundamental techniques and technologies for software-defined radios. The ACERT Program will also have an integrator tasked with fostering open source development support for ACERT-developed code. DARPA plans to hold a Proposer Day for ACERT, the details of which will be posted as a revision to this BAA. Technical proposals should address all of the forthcoming ACERT challenges and result in a working prototype system. Performers are encouraged to use open source Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) licensing to enhance technology transition, although other development models and licenses will be considered. In addition to this BAA and before submitting proposals, a prospective offeror MUST refer to the ACERT Proposer Information Pamphlet (PIP) located at the DARPA website, http://www.darpa.mil/ipto/solicitations/solicitations.htm. The ACERT PIP contains additional details on the program objectives, application space, program description, evaluation plans and metrics, program scope, general information, submission process, reporting requirements and procedures, proposal format, evaluation and funding processes and administrative addresses. As with any DoD research, if the research yields results with a military application, the potential for classification exists. I. Funding Opportunity Description PROGRAM SCOPE DARPA 1.1 ACERT The goal of the ACERT program is to construct a distributed radio team that is able to use capabilities inherent in aggregating nodes, while leveraging advantages that are unique to a distributed system. 1.1.1 ACERT CHALLENGES The ACERT program has three primary challenges: a. Creating models, algorithms, and prototypes for distributed control of radio resources and shared situation awareness. b. Designing and implementing team access controls including new models for decentralized trust and new algorithms that take advantage of locality and density. c. Managing collaborative channel characteristics including leveraging of the broadcast channel for shared awareness, cross-layer optimizations, and possibilities for cognitive Media Access Control (MAC) layers that improve their performance over time. 1.1.2 ACERT PROGRAMMATICS AND SCHEDULING Proposals should be for a base period of 18 months (Phase I). Proposers are encouraged to provide for optional tasks in Phase II (18 months). The decision point at the end of Phase I will include an evaluation of progress toward satisfying the ACERT GOAL Metrics. Funding for Phase II will be subject to satisfactory progress of ACERT research and DARPA priorities. 1.1.3 ACERT GOAL METRICS (see ACERT PIP for details) 1.1.4 ACERT INTEGRATION The ACERT integration task will be to create interest in a development community to perpetuate open source development of ACERT, and host and maintain the products of the ACERT technical performers. Additionally, the systems integrator will also be required to focus on cross-platform portability, validation, maintenance, documentation and version control of the software. Organizations may propose to perform both development and integration for ACERT. 1.2 INDEPENDENT TEST AND EVALUATION (ITE) The independent test and evaluator will be responsible for assessing progress toward the goal metrics for each phase of the ACERT program. This is not a solicitation for proposals to perform independent test and evaluation tasks. II. Award Information The Government reserves the right to select all, some portion, or none of the proposals received in response to this solicitation and to make awards without discussions with offerors. However, the Government reserves the right to conduct discussions if the Source Selection Authority later determines them to be necessary. Proposals identified for funding may result in a contract, grant, cooperative agreement, or other transaction depending upon the nature of the work proposed, the required degree of interaction between the parties, and other factors. If warranted, portions of resulting awards may be segregated into pre-priced options. III. Eligibility Information 1. Eligible Applicants All responsible sources capable of satisfying the Government's needs may submit a proposal that shall be considered by DARPA. Small Disadvantaged Businesses, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Minority Institutions (MIs) are encouraged to submit proposals and join others in submitting proposals. However, no portion of this BAA will be set aside for Small Disadvantaged Business, HBCU and MI participation due to the impracticality of reserving discrete or severable areas of this research for exclusive competition among these entities. Awards made under this BAA may be subject to the provisions of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Subpart 9.5, Organizational Conflict of Interest. All offerors and proposed subcontractors must affirmatively state whether they are supporting any DARPA technical office(s) through an active contract or subcontract. All affirmations must state which office(s) the offeror supports, and identify the prime contract number. Affirmations should be furnished at the time of proposal submission. All facts relevant to the existence or potential existence of organizational conflicts of interest, as that term is defined in FAR 2.101, must be disclosed in Volume I of the proposal, organized by task and by year. This disclosure shall include a description of the action the Contractor has taken, or proposes to take, to avoid, neutralize, or mitigate such conflict. 2. Cost Sharing or Matching Cost sharing is not required for this particular program. However, cost sharing will be carefully considered where there is an applicable statutory condition relating to the selected funding instrument (e.g., for any Technology Investment Agreement under the authority of 10 U.S.C. 2371). IV. Application and Submission Information 1. Address to Request Application Package This announcement contains or refers to all information required to submit a proposal. 2. Content and Form of Application Submission a. This BAA requires completion of an online Cover Sheet for each Proposal prior to submission. To do so, the offeror must go to http://www.dyncorp-is.com/BAA/index.asp?BAAid=05-37 and follow the instructions there. Each offeror is responsible for printing the BAA Confirmation Sheet and attaching it to every copy. The Confirmation Sheet should be the first page of the Proposal. If an offeror intends to submit more than one Proposal, a unique UserId and password must be used in creating each Cover Sheet. Failure to comply with these submission procedures may result in the submission not being evaluated. b. Security classification guidance on a DD Form 254 (DoD Contract Security Classification Specification) will not be provided at this time since DARPA is soliciting ideas only. After reviewing incoming proposals, if a determination is made that contract award may result in access to classified information, a DD Form 254 will be issued upon contract award. If you choose to submit a classified proposal you must first receive the permission of the Original Classification Authority to use their information in replying to this BAA. c. New Requirements/Procedures. The Award Document for each proposal selected and funded will contain a mandatory requirement for submission of DARPA/IPTO Quarterly Status Reports and an Annual Project Summary Report. All unclassified reports will be submitted electronically via the DARPA/IPTO Technical-Financial Information Management System (T-FIMS), utilizing the government-furnished Uniform Resource Locator (URL) on the World Wide Web (WWW). Further details may be found in the PIP. d. Proposal Format. Proposers must submit an original and four copies of the full proposal and two electronic copies (i.e., 2 separate disks) of the full proposal (in PDF or Microsoft Word 2000 for IBM-compatible format on a 3.5-inch floppy disk or CD-R). Mac-formatted disks will not be accepted. Each disk must be clearly labeled with BAA 05-37, proposer organization, proposal title (short title recommended) and Copy number of 4. 3. Submission Dates and Times The full proposal (original and designated number of hard and electronic copies) must be submitted in time to reach DARPA by 12:00 NOON (ET) May 26, 2005 in order to be considered during the initial evaluation phase. However, BAA 05-37, the ACERT BAA will remain open until 12:00 NOON (ET) April 11, 2006. Thus, proposals may be submitted at any time from issuance of this BAA through April 11, 2006. While the proposals submitted after the May 26, 2005 deadline will be evaluated by the Government, proposers should keep in mind that the likelihood of funding such proposals is less than for those proposals submitted in connection with the initial evaluation and award schedule. DARPA will acknowledge receipt of submissions and assign control numbers that should be used in all further correspondence regarding proposals. 4. Intergovernmental Review N/A 5. Funding Restrictions Authorization of precontract costs will be considered in situations of genuine urgency where programmatic benefits will accrue from their use. 6. Other Submission Requirements Proposals not meeting the format described in the ACERT PIP may not be reviewed. This notice, in conjunction with the BAA 05-37 PIP and all references, constitutes the total BAA. No additional information is available, nor will a formal RFP or other solicitation regarding this announcement be issued. Requests for same will be disregarded. V. Application Review Information 1. Criteria (listed in descending order of relative importance): (1) Overall Scientific and Technical Merit (2) Innovative Technical Solution to the Problem (3) Offeror's Capabilities and Related Experience (4) Plans and Capability to Accomplish Technology Transition (5) Cost Realism 2. Review and Selection Process It is the policy of DARPA to ensure impartial, equitable, comprehensive evaluation of all proposals and to select the source (or sources) whose offer meets the Governments technical and policy goals. Evaluation of proposals will be accomplished through a scientific review of each proposal, using the above criteria which are detailed further in the PIP. Proposals will not be evaluated against each other, since they are not submitted in accordance with a common work statement. DARPA's intent is to review proposals as soon as possible after they arrive. However, proposals may be reviewed periodically for administrative reasons. Restrictive notices notwithstanding, proposals may be handled for administrative purposes by support contractors. These support contractors are prohibited from competition in DARPA technical research and are bound by appropriate non-disclosure requirements. Input on technical aspects of the proposals may be solicited by DARPA from non-Government consultants /experts who are also bound by appropriate non-disclosure requirements. Non-Government technical consultants/experts will not have access to proposals that are labeled by their offerors as GOVERNMENT ONLY. Use of non-government personnel is covered in FAR 37.203(d). VI. Award Information Administration 1. Award Notices Principal Investigators will receive a letter informing them of the disposition of their proposal via U.S. mail. 2. Administrative and National Policy Requirements Proposers may wish to visit DARPAs Contract Management Office (CMO) website (http://www.darpa.mil/cmo/pages/modelgrantagreement.htm) for model grant and cooperative agreement terms and conditions. For Research Involving Human Subjects: Proposals selected for funding are required to comply with provisions of the Common Rule (32 CFR 219) on the protection of human subjects in research (http://www.dtic.mil/biosys/downloads/32cfr219.pdf) and the Department of Defense Directive 3216.2 (http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/html2/d32162x.htm). All proposals that involve the use of human subjects are required to include documentation of their ability to follow Federal guidelines for the protection of human subjects. This includes, but is not limited to, protocol approval mechanisms, approved Institutional Review Boards, and Federal Wide Assurances. These requirements are based on expected human use issues sometime during the entire length of the proposed effort. For proposals involving greater than minimal risk to human subjects within the first year of the project, performers must provide evidence of protocol submission to a federally approved IRB at the time of final proposal submission to DARPA. For proposals that are forecasted to involve greater than minimal risk after the first year, a discussion on how and when the offeror will comply with submission to a federally approved IRB needs to be provided in the submission. More information on applicable federal regulations can be found at the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Human Research Protections website (http://www.dhhs.gov/ohrp/). 3. Reporting Post-award reporting requirements are set forth in the Proposer Information Pamphlet. The DARPA/CMO website referenced above also provides general information about reports required specifically for grants and cooperative agreements. VII. Agency Contacts Fax: (703) 741-7804 Addressed to: DARPA/IPTO, BAA 05-37 Electronic Mail: [email protected] Electronic File Retrieval: http://www.darpa.mil/ipto/Solicitations/solicitations.htm Mail to: DARPA/IPTO ATTN: BAA 05-37 3701 N. Fairfax Drive Arlington, VA 22203-1714