The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has awarded Texas-based small business Cobalt Solutions $750,000 to develop its Urban Canyon Detection Tracking and Identification of Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles system.
The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II award tasks Cobalt to keep working on a system that uses commercial 5G signals to find adversarial small UAVs in urban canyon environments, DHS said Monday.
The award follows a Phase I effort where the company showed the feasibility of its 5G Passive Radar UAS Tracking and Targeting sensor.
Under Phase II, Cobalt must produce a prototype after 24 months and demonstrate its tracking system to potentially secure a Phase III award and eventually commercialize the technology.
“As more 5G mmWave transceivers are deployed in city centers, the ability to detect and track drones in complex urban geometries becomes easier, while not contributing to an already crowded radio frequency spectrum,” explained Jeff Randorf, a DHS Science and Technology (S&T) engineering adviser and SBIR topic manager.