RINGS-VO: Building Resilient NextG Systems for Experimentation (RINGS BRIDGE)

Our world has become digitized and so has the economy. The digital economy is the result of the transformation of traditional economic activities, products, and services into digital form. The backbone of the digital economy is hyperconnectivity, the growing interconnectedness of people, organizations, and machines resulting from wireless technology and the internet of things (IoT). U.S. leadership in wireless technology is critical and has been identified as a national priority to regain US-leadership for 6G technology development. The NSF RINGS-VO project is a public-private partnership effort to re-establish US-leadership in 6G technology and establish global leadership for digital economy transformation, much like U.S. growth and leadership in internet and network transformation pioneered Google and Apple into global technology leaders. MITRE’s RINGS-VO solution - RINGS BRIDGE - leverages years of prior investment, national trustworthiness and expertise in incentivizing unbiased collaboration across multiple stakeholders. Capabilities like the MITRE Innovation Toolkit (a publicly available collection of proven approaches to help teams be more innovative) will be customized and redeployed for RINGS participants while also leveraging MITRE’s significant investment in information technology sharing across the MITRE NERVE, a unique integration environment allowing MITRE lab access from anywhere, by any U.S. partner. RINGS BRIDGE fosters collaboration across the RINGS stakeholder community through the creation of a collaboration ecosystem, incorporation of a custom innovation toolkit, and development and execution of an incentive program across the participants. This system features a layered combination of technologies, methods, and tools. Together this gateway connects RINGS teams and partners, encourages burden-free access and uses social-innovation methods and tools to promote increased program impact and participation. RINGS BRIDGE draws from already existing MITRE capabilities that can be implemented to support the RINGS program within days of kickoff. RINGS BRIDGE will be customized within MITRE’s existing infrastructure to provide a broad range of capabilities that will promote and encourage information sharing, coordination, and collaboration between RINGS research teams. MITRE’s NERVE and Partnership Network (MPN) will provide the foundation for RINGS-VO information systems. A central portal would provide real-time project information, news, research agendas, and upcoming meetings. The portal can support hosting files, data, and code. Research partners would have private space to securely collaborate. Additional collaboration spaces can be added for joint communications among specific research teams and external entities. The portal offers remote connectivity with other RINGS networks. Dedicated personnel would provide support and maintenance to all RINGS partners. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.