Smart Manufacturing

The realistic near-to-mid-term serviceable addressable market for private 5G among U.S. small and medium-sized manufacturers is not "all manufacturers." It is the subset with real mobility, reliability, coverage, or security pain: plants using automated guided vehicles (AGVs), autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), machine vision, connected workers, outdoor yards, large indoor spaces, or metal-heavy RF environments. Manufacturing is already among the leading sectors for private mobile network deployments worldwide, and published case studies show double-digit productivity gains and lower infrastructure capex versus Wi-Fi deployments. Based on data compiled by the National Association of Manufacturers, roughly 50,000 U.S. manufacturing firms fall in the 20-99-employee band alone, with several thousand more in the 100-250 range.

This segment buys on simplicity, speed, fit, and economics, not on global platform standardization, and its stated barriers to adoption are consistent and compounding: ROI ambiguity, legacy equipment and retrofit costs, spectrum and regulatory fragmentation, uneven device ecosystems, IT/OT integration complexity, in-house skills shortages, and tight capital budgets. A proprietary platform from a tier-one vendor addresses almost none of these barriers directly; it is priced and supported for large campuses and multi-site accounts, not a single plant with one connectivity problem to solve.

An all-open-source stack removes the structural cost and lock-in that makes proprietary platforms a poor fit for this segment. Because OCUDU's O-CU/O-DU communicate with the rest of the network over open, standardized interfaces (especially the O-RAN 7.2x split to the O-RU), the network can be assembled from whichever RU vendor best fits a given plant's bands, form factor, and budget, rather than a single bundled radio line. Together, OCUDU, SD-Core, SD-RAN, and OSC form one integrated, fully open-source 5G stack that a smaller solution provider or systems integrator can deploy, support, and price as a right-sized, as-a-service offer for a single plant, instead of selling a broad, vendor-locked platform. That directly answers this market's stated preference for outcome-first, economically flexible offers, and it supports a Wi-Fi-coexistence posture (private 5G for the hard problem zones, Wi-Fi where it already works) rather than a rip-and-replace sale.

The trade-off of an all-open-source stack is that the burden of proving interoperability, stability, and security shifts from a single vendor's warranty to the integrator and the open-source community itself. SMM buyers, who by their own account lack in-house cellular and associated cybersecurity expertise, have little tolerance for integration failures discovered after deployment. This is exactly the gap the on-going OCUDU Testing & Validation Plan, and its RTEC-centered extensions, are designed to close: independently witnessed, multi-vendor testing of device diversity, RU diversity, outdoor RF performance, Core/RIC/SMO integration, and security. The proposal should leverage the current, on-going testing and evaluation activities in RTECs and associated results on this front.

Although this topic is anchored in a specific vertical to ensure a concrete deployment environment, real users, and a defensible commercialization path, proposers should recognize and are required to present the technical work in terms of the generic network performance classes it advances. Improvements made to the OCUDU O-CU/O-DU under this effort (scheduler behavior, mobility management, uplink capacity, stability under sustained load, security features) are expected to generalize across verticals and to benefit the broader community of RAN developers building on OCUDU. The Technical Volume shall include a mapping of each selected use case, and its associated KPMs, to the performance class or classes it exercises, and shall identify which anticipated OCUDU code or feature enhancements correspond to each class.

For this topic, the dominant performance classes are ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) and high-mobility reliability: sustained sub-30 ms (threshold) to sub-15 ms (objective) latency for machine-vision backhaul, ≥99.5% handover success at operational AGV/AMR speeds, and ≥ five-nines availability for safety-critical services, all in dense, metal-heavy RF environments.

Research and development for this effort should address, at minimum, the following questions: • All-Open-Source Economics: What is the fully loaded cost (integration, support, spectrum, hardware) of an OCUDU + SD-Core + SD-RAN + OSC deployment relative to a proprietary platform at SMM scale, and how should that be packaged as a CBRS-based, as-a-service offer within the price point SMM buyers require ($100,000-$250,000)? • Use-Case-First Automation: Which of the use cases defined below deliver the fastest, most measurable ROI on the open-source stack, and what RTEC-executed interoperability tests (Device, RU, Core, RIC/SMO, and Infrastructure dimensions) are needed to validate each one end-to-end? • Trust in Open Source: How does RTEC-executed testing of the full open-source stack (not just OCUDU) reduce the integration risk and skills-shortage barrier that SMM buyers most often cite, and what evidence package best converts community-maintained, no-license-fee software into a procurement-ready proof point for a buyer with no in-house cellular expertise?

Solutions leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for predictive maintenance, network optimization, or automated fault resolution are encouraged but not required. DoW will consider any novel concept that increases the reliability, economics, and trustworthiness of an all-open-source private 5G/FutureG platform for the manufacturing vertical. Dual-use opportunities are expected across both commercial SMM and DoW facility networks.

Program: SBIR, Phase I and Phase II Agency: Department of War, Office of the Secretary of Defense Topic number: OSW26BZ06-DV032 Solicitation: 26.BZ Released September 2, 2026; proposals accepted from September 23, 2026 Closes October 21, 2026. Check the official solicitation for the exact due time. Award type: contract, not a grant. Official solicitation: https://www.dodsbirsttr.mil/topics-app/ Listed on SBIR.gov: https://www.sbir.gov/topics/12968. SBIR.gov copies agency solicitations and can lag behind them; the official solicitation is the final word.

Small businesses only: a for-profit US business with 500 or fewer employees, including affiliates.

More than 50% owned and controlled by US citizens or permanent residents (some agencies also accept majority ownership by venture capital, hedge fund or private equity firms; the solicitation says).

SBIR: the principal investigator is primarily employed by the business. STTR: the business partners with a US nonprofit research institution or university, which does at least 30% of the work.

Registered in SAM.gov before submitting.

Check the official solicitation for its own conditions, proposal limits and security review.