Jun 27, 2023   SOURCE: BusinessWire

Aalyria Awarded Contract to Utilize Tightbeam Laser Comms Capability for Naval Research Laboratory SOAR Project

Aalyria – a startup commercializing networking and communications technologies acquired from Google – has been awarded a contract with the Office of Naval Research and Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) to utilize the company’s Tightbeam technology to develop a first-of-its-kind capability to enable ultra-fast, hyper-secure, over-the-horizon connectivity across the Navy’s sea, air, and land assets. The initial $7 million contract award is for the first phase of the Navy’s Secure Optical Aerial Relay (SOAR) project.

Aalyria’s Tightbeam is the world's most advanced coherent light free space optics technology. Capable of delivering speeds starting at 100 Gbps through hundreds of kilometers of atmosphere, Tightbeam utilizes specially-designed terminals, which can be mounted on land, sea, air, and space assets, to move data intact through challenging atmospheric conditions, enabling connectivity where no supporting infrastructure exists. Tightbeam’s Pointing, Acquisition and Tracking (PAT) capability can establish connections among static or in-motion objects in seconds. Its low probability of intercept profile enables ultra-secure communications that are highly resistant to disruption. And its proprietary Atmospheric C.O.R.E. and Adaptive C.O.R.E. transmission technologies reconstitute data degradation resulting from atmospheric anomalies, enabling speeds and fidelity previously not possible with other atmospheric free space optical communications systems.

Aalyria’s work with NRL will focus on developing the Secure Optical Aerial Relay (SOAR) capability, which seeks to enable over-the-horizon connectivity between distributed naval assets operating across land, air, and sea. As part of this work, Tightbeam terminals will be delivered for installation on naval aircraft and other platforms. The goal of SOAR is to provide a robust, low latency, high bandwidth free space optical communication capability for warfighting scenarios.

This contract with NRL fits into Aalryia’s larger mission to create, organize and manage the world’s most advanced networks to enable connectivity everywhere. In addition to Tightbeam, the company is commercializing a separate and complementary advanced networking capability called Spacetime.This technology is capable of orchestrating and managing networks of ground stations, aircraft, satellites, ships, urban meshes, and more. It optimizes and continually evolves the antenna link scheduling, network traffic routing, and spectrum resources -- responding in real time to changing network requirements.

“When we demonstrate Tightbeam’s capabilities, the reaction is routinely one of disbelief,” said Nathan Wolfe, CTO of Aalyria Technologies. “The technology can deliver faster speeds, across greater distances, and through more difficult conditions than people think is possible. We’re excited to leverage Tightbeam’s unique, cutting-edge technology to advance critical communications capabilities for the Navy.”

Aalyria emerged from stealth in late 2022 after acquiring the technological underpinnings of Tightbeam and Spacetime from Google. Both technologies were developed within Google and used on various connectivity projects across Alphabet for nearly a decade before being acquired by Aalyria. In the months since emerging from stealth, Aalyria has won a number of government and commercial contracts, including ones to advance the Hybrid Space Architecture with the Defense Innovation Unit; orchestrate a LEO constellation for Rivada Space Networks; integrate and connect key battlefield capabilities with Anduril; and integrate Spacetime into national security solutions developed by Leidos.