Coming up with awesome new SDR waveforms is something someone who is already funded can do, or something someone can do for fun (I'll probably enter). In this contest, the cost to enter is really low, and you'll get radio hackers who are interested in the problem. DARPA wins if it gets a few marginal people interested in the problem, not just if they come up with a new production waveform.
Contests work well if they're easy to enter or if winning brings you notoriety beyond the prize. Otherwise, you'd have to set an absurdly high prize to make it a high enough expectation to facilitate raising money for each of the teams, enough to have real competition -- like offering $1t for 51% of Osama Bin Laden in 2001, or $20t for a successful Mars colony for 100 users, etc.
Coming up with awesome new SDR waveforms is something someone who is already funded can do, or something someone can do for fun (I'll probably enter). In this contest, the cost to enter is really low, and you'll get radio hackers who are interested in the problem. DARPA wins if it gets a few marginal people interested in the problem, not just if they come up with a new production waveform.
Contests work well if they're easy to enter or if winning brings you notoriety beyond the prize. Otherwise, you'd have to set an absurdly high prize to make it a high enough expectation to facilitate raising money for each of the teams, enough to have real competition -- like offering $1t for 51% of Osama Bin Laden in 2001, or $20t for a successful Mars colony for 100 users, etc.