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DARPA Looks To Adaptive Battlefield Wireless Nets
An anonymous reader passed us a NetworkWorld link about an effort at DARPA to succeed in combat through networking. The idea is to keep soldiers in a position of informational superiority through a tactical radio network that would 'link' everyone together on the battlefield. "Project WAND, for Wireless Adaptive Network Development, will exploit commercial radio components, rather than custom ones, and use a variety of software techniques and algorithms, many of them only just now emerging in mature form. These $500 walkie-talkie-size radios will form large-scale, peer-to-peer ad hoc nets, which can shift frequencies, sidestep interference, and handle a range of events that today completely disrupt wireless communications ... [right now] 'The average soldier on the ground doesn't have a radio,' says Jason Redi, principle scientist for BBN's network technologies group, and the man overseeing the software work. Radios are reserved for platoon and company commanders, in part because of their cost: typically $15,000 to $20,000 each, with vehicle-mounted radios reaching $80,000."
very interesting technology if it ever gets deployed. It would be interesting to see what/if any commercial spin-offs ever get into the hands of civilians too
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Wouldn't these new battlefield wireless networks give off a radio signal? Couldn't someone with the right equipment then deduce the position of any force using such equipment for a tactical advantage?
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
The startup I work for is developing wireless intrusion prevention kit for these sorts of networks.
Go Team America!
I noticed that the current cost of a vehicle-mounted radio is $80,000. Abdul with the $50 cell phone and the IED detonator seems to offer more bang for the buck.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I wonder how they'd look to power these things. If they went with rechargeable batteries, then the troops would need a place to charge them every night/week or so. And if every soldier has one, that would make things interesting logistically... Would it be possible to make solar powered charging kits? On the other hand they could go with disposable batteries that would be shipped in with other supplies. Or they could just rotate out rechargeable ones I suppose.
Those are some expensive radios! I understand that they have to be durable, encrypted, frequency shifting, long range, long lasting battery, ect, but 15,000$? are they gold plated or something?
how about you give every squad leader a satellite telephone (modded a little) and have a system where each phone number is based on their designation? (fireteam #, squad #, platoon #, company #, regiment #, Battalion #, regiment #, brigade #, corp #) Not necessarily in that order or form, but you get the idea.
Sure its not as secure as their current radio system, but since we are not fighting a technologically advanced opponent like the Russians anymore, that level of security is unnecessary. (atleast for communications between squads, and most things up to regiments)
Salary of a geek browsing slashdot most of the time - $100K
Cost of a radio - $15K
Saving an american life on a battlefield - priceless. Isn't it???
Give everyone one OLPC. Rename it OLPS. They wouldn't notice anything.
Sounds like even more gear for the poor infantryman to carry around in the 130F heat.
Hooah
> It'll make communications a lot easier if we can use our handhelds, and have it eventually retransmitted to our dispatch center rather than having to run back to the truck to ask for an air ambulance or whatever.
That technology already exists. It is called an HT, Project 25, and a repeater. Most public safety agencies have HTs and repeaters. Many of them are converting to or using Project 25 at this time.
-Valen
Wouldn't using a radio on the battlefield give out the soldier's location?
Or at least, make the enemy aware to his presence?
I can see soldiers forgetting to turn this off...
Sigs are for the weak.
"This is DARPA"
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
The modern ad-hoc networks have a huge advantage when it comes to minimalizing transmitter power: routing. A soldier in the battlefield communicating with the HQ only needs enough power to reach the nearest retransmitter, which can be one of many cheap units dumped on the battlefield from a plane.
Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum is the technology the GP was referring to rather than the broader term "encryption". While FHSS can and usually is considered a form of encription not all flowers are roses.
The benifit to FHSS is that both endpoints know the frequency list so they know which frequencies and what order they should be hopping through therefore it is seamless as long as both endpoints remain in synch.
There are two ways that devices synch up their frequency list. One is physical connection (e.g. a 900MHz FHSS cordless phone placed in the cradle will re-synchronise the "channel" list and, if additional encription is implemented, their encryption key). The second method is during the handshake, or initial connection period of the radio link, on a pre-defined static frequency the frequency list is transmitted, then subsequent transmissions are carried out on the specified frequencies. In this case an encryption key is usually used to prevent eavesdroppers from being able to collect and use this frequency list. A new frequency list can be transmitted after the initial connection is made and perodically updated to increase the security or reliability of the link if needed.
Now this appears to be background noise as only very small snippets of the conversation, often times digital and/or encrypted to futher obfuscate the transmission, will be transmitted on any given frequency. This means that the pieces that can be received on any given frequency are tiny spikes in the transmission which are clicks or pops and would not be discernable from the "noise".
FHSS has been in use for many, many years by everyone from civilians to ultra top secret government orginizations to both hide or "encrypt" the communications and to reduce the interferance of similar devices operating on the same frequency bands.
Hope that is helpful.
Secondly, since the structure of warfare is hierarchical, it is not clear to me why they'd opt for ad-hoc peers in a mesh over an entire battle group, rather than having a local ad-hoc network that then uses NEMO (NEtwork MObility) protocols to allow any given segment (however large that is) to migrate as a single unit on the network. That would reduce overheads on routing traffic and would reduce the power needed for the bulk of the transmitters. It would therefore seem a very obvious solution to the whole problem.
Now, I have to admit that the DoD has plenty of very intelligent people and that their solution is the product of their mental powers combined with maybe twenty years of wisdom and experience, whereas I don't have experience of network management on the front lines.
On the other hand, they have failed spectacularly over that entire time in virtually all aspects. If that is the best their brightest can do, then maybe they need to find brighter people.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Loaded with all these electronic devices, a soldier will never get lost anymore, since they can follow the trail of dead batteries back to base.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Networking the nodes it not so hard. Doing roaming and routing is not so hard. Making the communication secure, that's hard. It's very much a non-trivial problem by itself too, and in military applications you need to solve this problem with additional constraints.
... :/
If you don't think so, consider the issue of key management: the nodes, in order to communicate, need to exchange some keys (the nodes need to authenticate other nodes - ultimately it all boils down to key management, although KM is inherently linked to other items such as identity, authentication, etc.). So how would one do it?
Preloading the keys are not feasible in a fast-changing situation. It's impractical, not to mention the issues when the enemy captures one radio node. You cannot have centralized key management, because it would be a single point of failure in the network - attack that and no keys can be exchanged. You need to decentralize the whole key management somehow in a way it can survive in the presence of Byzantine failures and actively hostile environment. It's a very hard problem.
I'm sort of doing a Ph.D. on this, but as it is, what I do for daily work is totally different from the Ph.D. subject, so my progress is basically non-existing. I don't work in the academia. Were it indeed so that I could pursue studies and work exclusively in this area
So, back during the cold war the fear of nuclear attacks leads the US to develop the internet, which reroutes around faults automatically. The result is a communications network which allows citizens across the world to communicate and obtain information without the need to rely on a few media companies.
Now, in order to get an advantage on the battlefield they are developing a network which will allow nodes to communicate without the need to rely on a single physical access point. Be afraid Verizon, be VERY afraid...
Of course, in reality they will just get the FCC to restrict it to death somehow, or patent it out of existence.
I looked up the actual price for an RT-1523B radio, which is a vehicle mounted VHF SINCGARS radio used by the U.S. Army. It's $7226, not $80K. I don't know where the numbers in the article came from.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
TFA handles about radio's in four bands ranging from 900MHz to 6GHz. There is not a lot of background radiation in those bands, so any increase will be a telltale sign of such a radio in the vicinity. A mobile uses frequency hopping too, but you can even hear it ring on nearby radios etc. Lower emitted power just means that the detection range gets smaller, but the precision gets higher. Imagine for instance a radiation detector (some kind of wideband receiver==cheap radio) that is wired to a bomb inside a room in a concrete building. The concrete makes that the radio's have to emit more power, the enclosed room concentrates the shockwave so you need less explosives to kill/wound those imperial soldiers.
Spreading those 'cheap' radios over the whole battlefield will give the imperial enemy some handy material to make a rough moving radio detector: clear the area of most dropped radios and put a detection coil around the captured radio antenna. Since it always tries to network, it will start to chatter once an imperial trooper comes in range.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
"Medic!"
So are they getting their ideas from EA games now? Because this is basically the "NetBat system" that is used in Battlefield 2142.
I've been researching self-managing networks, which like adaptive networks are a subset of a new field of research known as cognitive networks. The majority of research in this field was started by J. Mitola of Motorola Labs study of cognitive radio, which is basically synonymous with adaptive radio. The term "cognitive network" was coined only last year, but both IEEE and ACM have a handful of articles on this topic if you want to learn more. I truly believe this (autonomy) is where all networks are headed.
There already is B.A.T.M.A.N. a Better Approach To Mobile Adhoc Networking which can do such meshes rather reliably over WLAN for up to 2000+ nodes. To have such a project you'd only need to hook it up to propper radio hardware.
:)
But then Halliburton wouldn't make any profit.
"How are you going to contact a doctor at 4am"
You just call whoever's on radio watch and they'll radio for a doctor.
You won't even have to crawl across a field to do it, you'll just talk into a mike.
No sig today...
Guinness World Records has recognised folding@home (FAH) as the world's most powerful distributed computing network FAH has signed up nearly 700,000 PS3s t. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7074547.stm
Anyone happen to know exactly what those COTS components are? I mean, not only would using PS3s help battlefield communications, it would reduce training, and increase recruitment, our warfighters woud be pretrained before enlistment.
If you have to press a button to talk then most of the time there's nothing to get a fix on, certainly nothing to tell you numbers.
No sig today...
Not sure how oversight for DARPA projects work, but I hope that the US Coast Guard is involved, mainly because of this technologies application for Disaster Response.
Imagine how Katrina would've played out if responders had instant access to the specific needs from specific areas. Search & Rescue missions and supply missions could be better directed because of this tech.