Bubblephone and 2iC Awarded MOD Funding

Bubblephone Ltd have been awarded a contract by the MOD’s Centre for Defence Enterprise (CDE), part of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) for a joint, research-led, proof-of-concept project with 2iC Ltd for a ubiquitous flat communications network.

This is Bubblephone's third CDE contract and the fourth CDE project 2iC has been involved with. The two SME companies have worked together on a number of fruitful projects since being introduced to one another by CDE in early 2011.

Current UK deployed defence communications systems consist of a number of networks, which can be fixed, such as those found at bases, and mobile, such as vehicles. This means a lot of the communications nodes move around and come in and out of range of one another, rearranging the network. Any routes for voice and video data that hop via other vehicles need to be manually configured and are specific to that one set up. There is currently no way to dynamically reconfigure these kinds of networks as units move.
"So the system cannot dynamically hop via other units by using them as an intermediary. That is where our expertise comes in." said Johnathan Turrall, CEO of Bubblephone Ltd.

The research, funded via CDE’s defence open call for highly innovative proposals, will identify ways to securely relay signals from resources such as GPS receivers and cameras to other units that have permission to view that data. This will be achieved via intermediary units relaying signals dynamically. This will increase the communications reach of vehicles that would otherwise be out of range of one another.

Bubblephone and 2iC will demonstrate the system to the MOD in October 2013.