DARPA today announced its plans for the 2019 finale of the Spectrum Collaboration Challenge (SC2)—the world’s first collaborative machine-intelligence competition to address spectrum scarcity. Through a new partnership with the GSMA, the organization that represents mobile operators worldwide, DARPA will host a live SC2 Championship event alongside the 2019 Mobile World Congress Americas (MWCA) annual conference and exhibition. The DARPA and GSMA partnership creates an opportunity to display the groundbreaking SC2 technologies for the wireless telecommunications community at an accessible, public event.
The three-year SC2 competition, already in progress, aims to autonomously manage the increasingly congested electromagnetic (EM) spectrum and unlock its full potential. Through SC2, teams from across the globe are competing to develop new access strategies and wireless paradigms in which radio networks autonomously collaborate and reason about how to make the most efficient use of the spectrum. MWCA attendees will be able to witness this first-of-its-kind competition that merges artificial intelligence, machine learning, and software-defined radio technology to help fundamentally rethink spectrum operations.
“The cause of SC2 and the potential worldwide implications of its resulting solutions could not be better served than by holding our finale on a global stage. Our partnership with the GSMA provides us with an opportunity to reach the community most impacted and inspired by the increasing challenges of spectrum scarcity,” said Paul Tilghman, the DARPA program manager leading the Challenge. “The event will create a platform for the SC2 teams to present three years’ worth of innovation, addressing spectrum challenges that have plagued commercial and military communications over the past two decades.”