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ROME, N.Y. — The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) recently awarded $2.97 million in additional research and development funding to an existing contract with ANDRO Computational Solutions, LLC.

The added funding for the Waveform Agile Systems Palette – Next Generation (WASP-NG) Hardware/Software Prototype contract, valued at $6.17 million, raises the current obligated amount to $3.83 mllion. The funds will further advance the state-of-the-art in software-based waveforms for radio communications through October 2024.

“The contract continues to propel innovations in true software-based waveform development and in the growth of the government’s software waveform ecosystem to support the warfighter’s needs, including advancements in 5G cellular commercial technologies and beyond,” ANDRO President Dr. Andrew Drozd said in a news release.

These technologies are just the “tip of the spear” in advancing the communications landscape for both military and commercial radio manufacturers, he added.

ANDRO’s WASP-NG significantly reduces the time and cost to generate validated digital-communications waveforms for the rapid field deployment of military radio platforms. The company’s Heisenberg Lab, under the leadership of Dr. Ashwin Amanna, chief scientist for the research sector, assisted by James Bohl, senior research engineer, is performing the work in support of AFRL’s Information Directorate in Rome.

“We took AFRL’s vision, implemented it, and demonstrated it could work, but to get here required a partnership of multiple companies and an ecosystem of stakeholders with a common goal,” Amanna said. He credited AFRL Program Manager Michael Gudaitis for his forward-thinking vision.

ANDRO has already been in contact with several large defense/aerospace and commercial companies interested in leveraging the WASP-NG capability to enhance their radio communications products and services. The company hopes to expand its research to serve a growing customer base and is exploring a possible separate division centered on delivering waveform-as-a-service to customers.

Located at the Beeches Business Park, ANDRO (www.androcs.com) provides research, engineering, and technical services to the defense and commercial industries in numerous areas.

The AFRL is the primary scientific research and development arm for the U.S. Air Force.

Read the full story from the Central New York Business Journal here

ANDRO Computational Solutions, LLC is proud to be on the GALT team to secure USAF’s Weapons Directorate “Million Dollar Moment.”

GALT Aerospace was awarded a Direct to Phase II Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) contract at the recent USAF Weapons Pitch Day to bring emerging Software Radio technology into the Weapons Data Link (WDL) arena. GALT Aerospace competed in this highly competitive, live Pitch Day (WPD LIVE (https://engage.airforceweapons.com/wpd-live)), to secure this, on the spot, contract award.

GALT Aerospace is working with the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL), who has developed the Innovative Interoperable Software Defined Radio (i2SDR) technology and the USAF-EBZ Weapons Team to design the next-generation Weapon Data Link (WDL) compliant with Weapon Open System Architecture (WOSA). GALT will demonstrate this game-changing approach to enable much more operationally flexible and cost effective WDL across a wide variety of weapons. (For a technical overview please see GALT’s informative Post Pitch Interview at WPD LIVE (https://engage.airforceweapons.com/wpd-live) – under the “Live Stream Archive” tab).

The Air Weapons Pitch Event was part of an excellent 2-Day Collider event in late July, flawlessly executed by Accomplices.co and the AFLCMC/EBZ Weapons Directorate. GALT Aerospace made key connections with industry and the government team, including ANDRO Comptuational Solutions, LLC.

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ROME — ANDRO Computational Solutions, located at the Beeches Business Park and in its 28^th year of operation, was awarded $2,971,854 in additional research and development funding to an existing Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL/RI) contract titled, “Waveform Agile Systems Palette — Next Generation (WASP-NG) Hardware/Software Prototype,” valued at almost $6.2 million.

The added funding raises the current obligated amount to $3,831,000, which will be used to further advance the state-of-the-art software-based waveforms for radio communications through October 2024.

ANDRO’s WASP-NG significantly reduces the time and cost to generate validated digital communications waveforms for the rapid field deployment of military radio platforms. The work is being performed at ANDRO’s Heisenberg Lab under the leadership of Ashwin Amanna, chief scientist – Research Sector, and assisted by Sr. Research Engineer James Bohl and the ANDRO WASP-NG team in support of AFRL’s Information Directorate of Rome.

The company has been in contact with several large defense/aerospace and commercial companies interested in leveraging the WASP-NG capability to enhance their radio communications products and services. ANDRO President Andrew L. Drozd said he hopes to expand its WASP-NG research and development activities to serve a growing customer base and is exploring the launch of a separate division centered on delivering Waveform-as-a-Service (WaaS) to its customers.

Amanna attributes ANDRO’s success in advancing the WASP-NG capability to his resolute research team and the forward-thinking vision of the AFRL program manager, Michael Gudaitis.

“We took AFRL’s vision, implemented it and demonstrated it could work, but to get here has required a partnership of multiple companies and an ecosystem of stakeholders with a common goal,” Amanna said.

ANDRO provides research, engineering, and technical services to defense and commercial industries in the areas of advanced spectrum exploitation, secure wireless communications, software-based waveform development, cognitive software defined radio networking, multisensor data fusion and sensor resource management.

Read the full Sentinel article here

Central New York Business Journal article here

ANDRO Computational Solutions, LLC has been ranked as one of the Best Places to Work in Central New York by the Central New York Business Journal.

Best Places to Work recognizes and celebrates Central New York’s leading employers. The Business Journal considers the best companies to be those which foster a great place to work, are innovative, promote technology, offer people-focused programs, and have great leadership. ANDRO met or exceeded these selection criteria.

ANDRO, a privately-owned company established in 1994, has been dedicated to research, development, and the application of advanced computer software for a variety of defense and commercial applications. ANDRO’s diverse portfolio includes research and development in applying artificial intelligence and machine learning for dynamic spectrum management and spectrum exploitation, cyber-secure wireless communications, cognitive software defined radios and networks, multi-sensor and multi-target tracking, advanced radar data fusion and sensor resource management.

ANDRO continues to not only make a mark in the community with its technological achievements, but with outreach and support for several local organizations and efforts. Over the past 28 years, ANDRO has been an avid supporter of the Central New York community with a focus on workforce development, motivating youth through STEM plus Arts (STEAM) leadership education, and an overall support of economic development.

Past organizations that ANDRO has supported include the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA), Kicks for Kids Foundation, Rome Art and Community Center, Rome Capitol Theatre, the Project Fibonacci Foundation, Inc., CNY Food Bank, Cure Sanfilippo Foundation, Rome Area Chamber of Commerce, American Heart Association, Bellamy Awards, United Way and FIRST Robotics, to name a few.

To stay competitive in today’s recruitment efforts, ANDRO values its vast benefits to entice entry level and senior staff members by providing full medical coverage, paid time off, tuition assistance, life insurance, and the opportunity to grow with a locally-owned and operated company. Visit www.androcs.com for more information on ANDRO, including job placement opportunities. The company is in the process of expanding its operations and more information on this is forthcoming.

Rankings of the CNY Business Journal Best Places to Work in CNY will be announced at its golf event and reception on Sept. 12 at the Timber Banks in Baldwinsville, Onondaga County.

Daily Sentinel, May 24, 2022

Dr. Andrew Drozd, President & Chief Scientist of ANDRO Computational Solutions, LLC, has been invited as a panelist at The 36th IEEE International Workshop on Communications Quality and Reliability (IEEE-CQR). 

Dr. Drozd will join David Lu (AT&T) and Mallik Tatipumala (CTO, Ericsson Silicon Valley) on September 14th at the in person conference in Arlington, VA. Time of the panel TBD. View full panel details here

Panel: Machine Learning for Real-time Network Optimization – What Can Go Wrong?

Panel Moderator: Carol Davids, Research Associate Professor, CS Department and Founding Director, Real Time Communications Laboratory, Illinois Institute of Technology

Panel Description: Data and telecommunications networks produce enormous volumes of operational data.  Researchers today are exploring ways to apply ML/AI techniques to these data to develop self- regulating networks that can predict and respond to network events and trends in real-time.  As the network traffic increases in volume and complexity, and new networked applications place new demands, we can expect that the research of today will produce solutions that the network operators will be eager to adopt.  These applications could prove very helpful.  What do we need to do to avoid the problems that applications created using ML/AI techniques have produced in other areas?

Self-driving cars, for example, demonstrate that when their ML/AI-developed applications fail, they fail in spectacular and deadly ways, magnifying their errors rapidly and without self-correction.  Applications to determine the length of jail terms, the amount of bail, the terms and conditions of loans, university admissions, and hiring choices have tended to magnify social biases rather than help eliminate them.  Applications created using ML/AI techniques and applied to the output of surveillance cameras have been unable to identify women with dark skin as even humans!

Can applications that aim to provide real-time network management fail in similar ways?  We look at different types of potential failures: Technical failures in which a small wrong decision might escalate bringing a network down or amplifying rather than correcting the initial problem, and also the Societal failures: Could low numbers of Internet users in an underserved community, result in fewer network resources allocated to that community, amplifying rather than improving the available service?

These and related concerns will be addressed by our panelists, a diverse group of experts from the research and development, service provider, vendor, legal and advocacy sectors.

The 36^th IEEE International Workshop on Communications Quality and Reliability (IEEE-CQR), will be held in-person in Arlington, VA, September 13-15, 2022.  All speakers and most registrants will be on-site. Please see the registration page (https://cqr2022.ieee-cqr.org/registration/) for the various options.  The workshop offers technical sessions, original paper presentations, and keynotes panels designed to further career opportunities and the in-depth understanding of key issues impacting communications networks quality and reliability.

ROME — ANDRO Computational Solutions, LLC has been awarded four individual patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office for inventions designed to improve Fifth Generation (5G) and Next-G wireless communication systems performance.

The patents address methods for increasing radio frequency transmission rates and information-handling volume (U.S. Patent No. US 11,271,681 B2), assuring secure machine-to-machine (M2M) communications in autonomous radio networks (U.S. Patent No. 11,272,513 B2), optimizing radio spectrum allocation in real time (U.S. Patent No. 11,240,673 B2), and hardening wireless protocols against electromagnetic interference attacks (U.S. Patent No. 11,115,090 B2).

According to ANDRO Computational Solutions, LLC President Andrew L. Drozd, 5G communications system performance can be affected by various technological and environmental factors. U.S. Patent No. US 11,271,681 B2 titled, Rate-2 Full-Diversity Complex Space-Time Block Codes, applies massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna techniques to exploit transmitter diversity with novel code schemes to attain higher transmission rates in 5G systems. The ANDRO inventors, led by Anu Jagannath, include Jithin Jagannath and Drozd.

Drozd adds that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) currently assigns licensed and unlicensed spectrum bands for mobile communication devices to exchange data. ANDRO has studied the associated limitations in wireless network performance during such exchanges. U.S. Patent No. 11,272,513 B2 titled, Adjudication of Access Policies in Wireless Device Networks, leverages block chain technologies to enable secure and efficient M2M crypto transactions in decentralized wireless mesh networks.

The ANDRO inventor team includes local area residents Drozd, Joseph McCoy, Chris Maracchion, Timothy Woods, John Hrabik, and Sean Furman. A related patent applies a policy-based approach to continuously monitor and govern a communication device’s spectrum use in real time providing a considerable spectrum advantage.

U.S. Patent No. 11,240,673 B2 titled, Real Time Spectrum Access Policy Based Governance, enables radio devices in a wireless network to operate over special access frequency bands to alleviate spectrum confliction and eliminate interference that could degrade communication services.

To address interference threats that could hinder communication and pose security risks to wireless systems, U.S. Patent No. 11,115,090 B2 titled, Apparatus and Method for Jammer Resistant Protocol Stack Design, establishes a new protocol method that protects radio devices against such threats. The inventor team includes Jithin Jagannath, Anu Jagannath, and Drozd. The patent is the basis for the design of a new type of compact, interference-resilient adaptive transceiver being developed by ANDRO.

“ANDRO is leveraging its growing portfolio of patents and its military heritage of products to expand its operations,” said Drozd. “The company will be relocating its headquarters from its present location at the Beeches Business Park to a new headquarters facility in Rome during the latter half of 2023.”

ANDRO has been providing research, engineering, and technical services to defense and commercial industries since 1994.

ANDRO also has offices in Syracuse at the Central New York Biotech Accelerator and in Dayton, Ohio.

The independently-owned company is dedicated to research, development and the application of advanced computer software and hardware solutions for secure wireless communications, software defined radios, advanced radar and multi-sensor data fusion, and sensor resource management.

Visit www.androcs.com for more information on ANDRO’s technologies, products, and patents including job placements.

Read the full story here

Dr. Andy Drozd, President & Chief Scientist of ANDRO, was one of the over 65 innovators, industrials & inspirational thinkers that came together this week at Innovare for a scoping session hosted by the Griffiss Institute and Cantina, on how to best respond to a recent National Science Foundation (NSF) solicitation.

The group joined forces to sharpen key messages and coalesced the business and research communities’ needs and desires to advance research, workforce development, and economic opportunity in the broad lens of #cybersecurity. 

Included were representatives from SUNY Polytechnic Institute, Air Force Research Laboratory, New York State Technology Enterprise Corporation (NYSTEC), Indium Corporation, Rochester Institute of Technology, Peraton/Peraton Labs, ResilienX, Assured Information Security (AIS), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Binghamton University, Arch Street LLC, MACNY – The Manufacturers Association, FuzeHub, The Research Foundation for SUNY, Securboration, Syracuse University, ANDRO Computational Solutions, LLC, CNY Defense Alliance, Mohawk Valley Community College, Mohawk Valley EDGE, and more.

Learn more here