Govt accords high priority to indigenisation of SDRs for armed forces

The government has fast-tracked the indigenisation of Software Defined Radios (SDRs) with the country's premier research and development institutions - Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur - to fulfil the increasing demand by the armed forces across a broad spectrum of operations, the Ministry of Defence said on Tuesday.

The government has fast-tracked the indigenisation of Software Defined Radios (SDRs) with the country's premier research and development institutions - Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur - to fulfil the increasing demand by the armed forces across a broad spectrum of operations, the Ministry of Defence said on Tuesday. 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, said Defence Secretary Ajay Kumar.

Kumar said according to high priority to the indigenisation of SDR technology is an important milestone towards achieving the goals of self-reliance in the field of secured radio communication. Two key elements of indigenous SDR technology are the standardised operating software environment (OE) and applications (also 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 an India-specific operating environment called India Software Communication Architecture (SCA) profile or Indian Radio Software Architecture, according to an official statement released by the Ministry of Defence. Director of IIT Kanpur Abhay Karandikar, who is also the chairman of the SCA Committee constituted by MoD, has pioneered the idea of having an 'India SCA Profile'.

A Draft Project Report (DPR) has been formulated by DEAL/DRDO towards indigenous development of SDR with a roadmap and timelines. The Directorate of Standardisation (DoS) in the Department of Defence Production, MoD will steer the development of IRSA with DRDO, academia and industry with definition in three to six months and additional 18 months for the associated reference implementation, testing and compliance certification tools, the ministry said.

Availability of IRSA through access control will enable the Indian software vendors to integrate and make SDRs interoperable and security gradable. The IRSA will be notified by DoS and shared with the industry towards the development of indigenous SDR for use by Indian defence/security forces and export to friendly foreign nations. 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 exuded confidence on all organisations and said that it will create a new benchmark towards indigenisation of critical equipment which, so far, has been imported. This would give a boost to the endeavour to achieve 'Aatmanirbharta', reduce the import budget and create a secured radio network for the Armed Forces. He added that efforts will be made to complete it in a time-bound manner. (ANI)

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