May 5, 2026
Peraton Labs was awarded a Cooperative Agreement by the U.S. National Science Foundation Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (NSF TIP) for a collaborative project to deliver low-latency wireless extended reality (XR) for remote medical collaboration. The project will develop both XR-based medical applications and networking innovations to enable practically deployable, low latency wireless service. The advances in next-G networking are application-independent and will enable deployment of low latency service to support diverse high-value use cases across transportation, security, utilities, industrials, and civil and military defense.
The project on “Democratizing Low Latency Wireless for Remote XR Medical Collaboration” is part of the NSF Ideas Lab on Breaking the Low Latency Barrier for Verticals in Next-G Wireless Networks (NSF Breaking Low) initiative. NSF Breaking Low aims to accelerate new technologies that contribute to the growth of the U.S. economy in advanced wireless communications. The project is a university-industry collaboration comprised of two separate awards—one award to the University of Illinois and one award to Peraton Labs.
XR technology, including virtual reality and augmented reality, can make remote specialists available to assist when they are urgently needed. However, enabling such real-time shared experiences critically depends on the availability of low latency wireless networking which is not generally deployed.
Peraton Labs leads the project’s development of new techniques and technology for low latency wireless networking. This involves innovations across the underlying networking technology stack, including a new technique to adaptively control fine-grained Radio Access Network (RAN) resource allocation.
“By applying Peraton Labs’ expertise in radio resource/spectrum optimization and scheduling techniques for mobile networking to 5G latency-sensitive and bandwidth-focused services, we can make more efficient overall use of the wireless spectrum,” said Christine Zhang, Director and Chief Research Scientist at Peraton Labs and principal investigator for the Peraton Labs award.
As the research and development (R&D) arm of Peraton, a next-generation national security company, Peraton Labs is at the forefront of R&D for 5G (and beyond) with a broad portfolio of innovative 5G and FutureG projects, solutions, and capabilities. Peraton Labs creates advanced capability that harnesses AI, intelligent agents, and sensors to provide secure, resilient, and reliable 5G and FutureG services. The work has addressed applications in autonomy, logistics, tactical communications, virtual and augmented reality, and critical infrastructure.
Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. National Science Foundation.
