Cohere Technologies was awarded a $28 million contract by the Department of Defense (DoD) to develop radio access network (RAN) technologies to advance 5G/6G infrastructure.

The contract will support the development of a multi-waveform RAN prototype for integrated sensing and communications (ISAC). Specifically, Cohere will build a sovereign and mission-critical ISAC capability to deliver continuous air and ground monitoring masked as standard mobile network data.

Cohere's contract was awarded by the DoD's FutureG division, which focuses on the development of 5G and 6G. Its principal R&E director Tom Rondeau, principal director for FutureG, highlighted Cohere's support for the open centralized unit distributed unit (OCUDU) platform as a major factor in the decision.

Cohere supports OCUDU – a 5G/6G software stack offering an alternative to closed network vendor networks – through orthogonal time-frequency and space (OTFS) modulation. The waveform technology offers a mathematical method of packing data into radio waves across a two-dimensional grid. It differentiates from more commonly used orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), which underpins networking from Nokia, Ericsson, and others, which separates signals across time and frequency.

“As a proven innovator with a demonstrated ability to build multi-waveform platforms, Cohere Technologies offered a clear path that we could move on immediately. Their OTFS modulation carries information directly in the sensing domain, delivering massive communications and sensing performance advantages in high-Doppler environments. This solution rapidly delivers critical ISAC capabilities while building on our ‘innovate-first’ posture, demonstrating the tremendous opportunity for innovation," Rondeau said.

With its multi-wave capability, Cohere's work will combine support for both OFTS and OFDM while complying with FutureG's OCUDU platform and zero trust security requirements.

ISAC and 6G

Ultimately, Cohere's multi-waveform prototype will detect, classify, track, and cue countermeasures against drone threats. With its sensing capabilities, the DoD is banking on a RAN solution operating within commercial spectrum bands to 'camouflage' into everyday cellular traffic, away from enemy eyes.

This masking hinges on the ISAC method, a pillar 6G technology that works to make existing RAN networks operate as massive distributed sensors which Rondeau described as a "mission-first priority" for the DoD.

The technology underpins work in 6G standards from ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) and InterDigital. This work explores how radio signals can aid future neo-networks map their surroundings, detect objects, and infer occupancy or movement. As ISAC utilizes the communication signal as it 'hits' an object in a radar-like fashion, to an outsider observer, the transmission seems identical to normal cellular data traffic.

Nvidia is another ISAC proponent with its 6G AI-Wireless Intelligent Network (AI-WIN) initiative, which has seen it develop a multimodal ISAC application developed with Booz Allen that fuses camera vision and radio-frequency sensing to allow for detection and tracking of objects.

Cohere stepped up its ISAC operations last year with the formation of the business unit Pulsone Technology. With its Zak-OTFS offering at the heart of the venture, Cohere partnered with Duke University and Virginia Tech to demonstrate a real-time neural receiver running on Nvidia's Jetson platform, which reportedly offers integrated sensing and communications without a trade-off on capacity. The receiver eschews the need for offline training to enable real-time operation, reducing computational complexity.

Commenting on the DoD contract, Ray Dolan, chairman and CEO of Cohere Technologies, commented: “This ISAC contract ... represents a major milestone for Cohere and for the future of dual-use wireless technology. By combining our Pulsone Technology with conventional OFDM in a flexible, software-defined architecture, we can deliver high-performance sensing that is affordable, scalable, and operationally invisible - exactly what is needed to counter the growing threat of sophisticated drone and unmanned aerial systems (UAS).”

“This ISAC project award validates Cohere’s long-term vision of building sovereign, future-proof wireless infrastructure that serves both national security and commercial markets,” Dolan added.