The emergence over the past two decades of an active marketplace of commercial software products has dramatically changed the way computers are used. Many government information system, however, and especially such military systems as Command and Control Information Systems, have not been a big enough market to attract suppliers of commodity commercial software products, and indeed often have characteristics somewhat different from the general marketplace. COTS-based systems represent a way whereby the more specialized systems needed by the military can take whatever advantage they can from Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software products.

Discover II is a technology demonstration program to develop an demonstrate an affordable space-based radar (SBR) with High Range Resolution Ground Moving Target Indication, SAR imaging capabilities and Digitized Terrain Elevation Data (DTED) that will revolutionize surveillance and precision geolocation support to the tactical warfighter. The near- continuous, global access provided by the objective Discoverer II concept, in combination with emerging capabilities to develop and exploit information on stationary targets, moving targets, and terrain elevation, will provide new and significantly enhanced mission capabilities to operational commanders.

The ELB program is a joint Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration funded by the Navy, Marine Corps and the Office of the Secretary of Defence, and managed by the Naval Research. ELB is based on the new warfare paradigm defined by 'joint vision 2010, and on concepts developed by the Navy and Marine Corps in 'From the Sea', 'Forward...from the Sea', 'Ship to Objective Maneuver (STOM)', and 'Operational Maneuver from the Sea'. The objective of ELB is to demonstrate effective operation of dispersed forces in a variety of littoral environments, and to provide those forces timely remote fire support. Successful operation will depend on achieving a common situational awareness among a mobile, distributed command and control, a shortened sensor- to-shooter timeline, and effective utilization of all information source. The glue to hold this system of systems together is a reliable wide band communications system and network infrastructure. This paper will describe the overall architecture of ELB and focus on the core command and control functions associated with achieving a common situational awareness.

Situation awareness encompasses a knowledge of orders, plans and current knowledge of friendly force actions. Knowing where you are and being able to transmit that information in near real-time to other friendly forces provides the ability to exercise precise command and control over those forces. With respect to current command and control using voice methods, between 40 percent and 60 percent of Combat Net Radio traffic relates to location reporting of some sort. Commanders at Battle Group and below spend, on average, 40 percent of their total time performing position and navigation related functions. The need to rapidly transfer own force location information throughout a force and to process the received information quickly, accurately and reliably provides the rationale for the requirement for an automated situation awareness system. This paper describes the Situation Awareness System (SAS) being developed by Computing Devices Canada for the Canadian Department of National Defence as a component of the Position Determination and Navigation for Land Forces program. The SAS is being integrated with the Iris Tactical Command, Control, Communications System, which is also being developed by Computing Devices. The SAS software provides a core operating environment onto which command and control functionality can be easily added to produce general and specialist battlefield management systems.

To win the next war decisively with minimal causalities, both commanders and warfighters must rely on advanced battlespace awareness capabilities to acquire, exchange, and employ precise and accurate information throughout the battlespace to support warfighting activities. However, the chaotic situation of the battlespace usually prevents accurate delivery of information and correct provisioning of services. For example, messages sent by a warfighter to report medical emergency may not be delivered to the right command hierarchy and battlespace intelligence may not be delivered to the right warfighter due to the location of the warfighter. In this paper, we propose and describe an infrastructure, called the Battlespace AwarenessS Intelligent System (BASIS), to facilitate value-added battlespace awareness services based on location information of warfighters and network equipment.

In the paper we present the Adaptive Resource Allocation and Management (ARAM) algorithms developed to manage a Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) system supporting heterogeneous traffic mixes and operating under dynamic channel conditions. This traffic mix includes both: (i) data traffic that operates as an available bit rate flow and, (ii) video traffic that generates a variable bit rate flow. Both types of traffic use the Internet Protocol (IP) so they can be efficiently multiplexed on the same link. The dynamic channel conditions reflect time variation error rates due to external effects such as rain or jamming. ARAM attempts to maximize the utilization of the available capacity on the forward DBS link while maintaining Quality of Service (QoS) in the presence of congestion int he network and channel degradation effects. To achieve these ends, it utilizes adaptive control of video compression rates, data transmission rates, and channel forward error correction rates. One of the major features of ARAM is the admission control algorithm used to determine the number of variable bit rate flows admitted for service. In order to maximize the resource utilization, assignment of the variable bit rate services based on their peak rate is avoided. Instead, a flexible utilization of the bandwidth requiring the estimation of statistical multiplexing gain is used enabling more services to share the DBS link. Therefore in this paper, we focus on the ARAM admission control algorithm and assess its impact on QoS and DBS link utilization.

Interoperability is headline news in the computer industry today. Companies spend millions to enable computer systems to "talk" to each other. Industry leaders like Hewlitt-Packard, Motorola and British Petroleum are opting for common software approaches or common operating environments (COE for short) to solve interoperability problems. Why? The most common answer given is that while interoperability is critical, interoperability must be affordable. While industry is spending money, the government is spending time studying the problem in many task forces and blue ribbon panels. The recently completed Defense Science Board Report on Open Systems (Open Systems Task Force, October 1998) coined the term "Plug and Fight", analogous to industry's "Plug and Play", to capture the essence of the future capability DoD must have: systems that are modular, interchangeable, and interoperable. DoD's Command, Control, Communication, Computer, and Intelligence (C41) For the Warrior (C4IFTW) vision has been stated as follows: "The Warrior needs a fused, real-time, true-picture of the battlespace and the ability to order, respond, and coordinate vertically and horizontally to the degree necessary to prosecute the mission in that battlespace. " [OSTF 1998] Clearly this Holy Grail of capabilities encompasses more than just C41 systems. Tactical weapon platforms and other embedded computing systems must also play a significant role in the Plug and Fight operational forces vision. The U.S. Army Digital Battlefield Concept is an example of "Plug and Fight" technology for Army maneuver forces. The digital battlefield concept is most easily described as an overall heightened state of situational awareness for operational elements on the battlefield. Most would agree that the digital battlefield requires an unprecedented level of interoperability between systems that historically had no interoperable requirements at all. The notion of a COE for weapon platforms, a real time COE or RT COE, has been advanced by many as a potential solution to attain interoperability on the digital battlefield. The Army's Weapon System Technical Architecture Working Group (WSTAWG) is currently focused on developing an RT COE concept for Army weapon platforms. All this conceptual development will be moot if the capability is not affordable. Affordable for the purposes of this paper refers to the ownership costs associated with the development and maintenance of the weapon system software. It has been estimated that software maintenance accounts for about seventy percent of a weapon system' s overall IT life cycle cost. Of that cost approximately seventy-five percent is tied up in analysis and testing of post deployment software. Considering the number of systems, and their software/interoperability complexity, involved in the Army's Digital Battlefield, there should be plenty of employment for software engineers of the next century! It is the premise of this paper that affordable software for weapon platforms can be built using an RT COE concept that meets warfighting requirements for interoperability with the additional benefits of modularity and interchangeability. The Defense Information Infrastructure Common Operating Environment (DII COE) originated in 1995 with a simple observation about command and control systems: certain functions (mapping, track management, communication interfaces, etc.) are so fundamental that they are required for virtually every command and control system. Yet these functions are built over and over again in incompatible ways even when the requirements are the same, or vary only slightly, between systems. If these common functions could be extracted, implemented as a set of extensible low-level building blocks, and made readily available to system designers, development schedules could be accelerated and substantial savings could be achieved through software reuse. Moreover, interoperability would be significantly improved because common software is used across systems for common functions, and the functional capability only needs to be built correctly once rather than over and over again for each project. These observations led to the development of the present DII COE. Although its roots are in the C41 arena, the DII COE and its basic principles are not unique to DoD C41 systems. It has been recognized from the outset of the Army's IT initiatives that common software could play a key role in the integration of weapon platforms into the digital battlefield. There continues to be lively debate over the exact role of common software for the embedded computing environments of tactical weapon platforms. The arguments and issues are complex, spanning the spectrum of operations, technology, business and politics. What is needed is a demonstration of common software for embedded so that the real issues can be evaluated. This paper describes a concept for developing a COE for the embedded computing environments of Army weapon platforms.

A battlefield can be viewed as a collection of entities, enemy and friendly, during combat, each entity scans its surrounding with local sensors to be aware of the current situation. Through digitation of the battlefield, it is possible to share this locally sensed information among all the friendly entities. Significant war-fighting advantages can be realized, if this shared information is consistent. During one of the soldier-in-the-loop simulation exercises invovling ground-based enemy and friendly entities, it was found that achieving consistent snapshot at each friendly node is not a trivial problem. A few contributing factors are: suitable method for combining individual perspective to a global one, mode of communication, movement of all entities, different local perspective of each entity, sensor calibration, fault, and clock synchronization. At the US Army VETRONICS Technology Center, we are in the process of developing a family of algorithms capable of obtaining a consistent global picture invovling one of the critical properties, ground position of entities. In the first stage we have established that for point to point communicating entities, a vector clock based scheme uses fewer number of messages and arrives at the global picture earlier. However, this result does not scale to broadcast situations.

Mobile communication is an important military requirement. Voice communication still occupy a pre-eminent place in Army operations. Present-generation digital data communications at the tactical level are often accomplished using radio system designed primarily with voice in mind. Data throughput tends to be very limited and highly variable. If one regards the wireless communication network as a data pipeline, there are essentially three possible ways of improving the situation: (1) increase the size of the pipeline; (2) optimize transmission through the pipeline; or (3) be as smart and efficient as possible about what is put into the pipeline. The potential of the third approach is often overlooked. This paper describes a testbed being developed to study the impact of information management techniques, applied at the level of the application database in each participating node of a simulated tactical radio network on the quality and timeliness of information distribution across nodes.

This article strives to summarize some conclusions from our study on the DoD C3ISR architecture requirements, points to two areas of requirements, and provides a view of our work on five solutions in these ares. We focus in this paper on the wideband digital backbone links between the warfighter and the Global Information Infrastructure (GII). Several conclusions were reached during our studies: 1) the importance of using the evolving GII; 2) a strong requirements exists for a mobile wideband backbone interface between the GII and the mobile force structure; 3) incremental fielding of new mobile wideband information infrastructure is required and an evolutionary path is feasible building on commercial technology and existing DoD systems. The questions to be answered for the government by industry is how do we tap into this trillion dollar plus infrastructure and how do we make the solution compatible with the joint/combined mobile force structure.

In this paper we examine the vulnerability of ad hoc wireless networks due to intentional jamming and propose techniques to enhance network survivability. In the proposed scheme, we first examined the vulnerability of ad hoc wireless networks due to jamming and estimate the effort needed to protect the network. We then offer a hybrid solutions that combines source routing, Forward Error Control Coding, bandwidth efficient modulation, enhancement of hop count etc. We intend to show that, such a hybrid solution is an effective measure to protect ad hoc wireless networks from intentional jamming.

In this paper we present a method of bandwidth efficient coded modulation suitable for spread spectrum radio with AJ- LPI capabilities. In the proposed scheme, we first examine the error control properties of orthogonal codes and show their potential uses in FECC. The aspect of this paper that motivates us is that an orthogonal code has an equal number of 1's and 0's. This is to say that an n-bit orthogonal code has n/2 1's and n/2 o's; i.e., there are n/2 positions where 1's and 0's differ. Therefore the distance between two orthogonal codes is also n/2. Exploitation of this distance property of orthogonal codes is the basis of our development in this paper. We then offer a simple and cost-effective solution to coded modulation without bandwidth expansion. We intend to show that parallel signal processing in conjunction with N-ary orthogonal signaling and M-ary modulation techniques offer a cost-effective solution to bandwidth efficient coded modulation.

In the past two years, the Digital Wireless Battlefield Network consortium that consists of HRL Laboratories, Hughes Network Systems, Raytheon, and Stanford University has participated in the DARPA TRP program to leverage the efforts in the development of commercial digital wireless products for use in the 21st century battlefield. The consortium has developed an infrastructure and application testbed to support the digitized battlefield. The consortium has implemented and demonstrated this network system. Each member is currently utilizing many of the technology developed in this program in commercial products and offerings. These new communication hardware/software and the demonstrated networking features will benefit military systems and will be applicable to the commercial communication marketplace for high speed voice/data multimedia distribution services.

The emergence of LAN architectures in Combat Vehicle computer system is part of an emerging new class of LAN systems. These systems operate in harsh, non-deterministic environments, and are expected to sustain faults and continue operating. The computer system perform dual functions of system control and real-time information exchange. The LANs in these systems have a hybrid message set consisting of vehicle control messages with crisply defined time constraints and real-time information with vaguely defined time constraints. Among platforms of this type, we find combat vehicles of all types, systems involved in the clean up of hazardous materials, space vehicles, and special anti-terrorist vehicles. We present the Adaptive Earliest Deadline First (AEDF) scheduling algorithm and a benefit metric for measuring performance. The AEDF scheduler was developed for the message sets found in combat vehicle LANs. This scheduler guarantees 100 percent of message time constraints under nominal conditions and optimizes scheduling under overload conditions induced by faults. The benefit metric provides an accurate means of evaluating scheduler performance based on message importance, timeliness and state.

We present a two-tiered network design which supports a diverse traffic mix in mobile military scenarios. The upper tier is the backbone network and the lower tier consists of the end user cells. The performance of the cellular network is evaluated via simulation.

The warrior to warrior communication system is a key element for digitizing the battlespace. Power efficiency, wideband operation for security, and specified bit error rate and availability are the principal requirements. The RF carrier frequencies being considered for this application range from 2 MHz to 2 GHz. This paper presents the results of a study, whose objective was to evaluate the RF link over the frequency range of interest, as an aid in the selection of a carrier frequency for achieving the largest possible coverage for the warrior to warrior communication system. The main components of the RF link are the power radiated by the transmit antenna,the propagation loss, and the background noise level at the receive antenna. Unique to this study is the quantification of the power radiated by the transmit antenna that is consistent with the safety standard for human exposure to RF electromagnetic fields. Over the frequency range of interest the radiated power is limited by the safety standard, in addition, at the lower frequencies, the available antenna volume limits the power that is raided. The propagation los consists of four factors, (1) free space and ground factor, (2) slow fade factor, (3) fast fade factor and (4) building penetration factor. Each of these factors is evaluated separately over the entire frequency range. The background noise at the receive antenna port is found in the literature. The measure of performance is the signal-to-noise ratio at the receive antenna port for a specified signal-information bandwidth. The results of the study indicate that, for a new type of efficient antenna, operation at frequencies below 20 MHz has the potential for communications over a set of environments ranging from a benign flat rural terrain to a severe urban environment. Without this new antenna, no one frequency band provides good performance for all environments. This new 'Merenda' antenna is discussed briefly in an appendix. The benefits associated with the use of this antenna are included in the body of the paper.

In this report, we present adaptive algorithms of the real- time correlative analysis with the use of a moving window with control of stationarity. The control means checking mean values and dispersion in floating ranges of confidence. Results of computer simulation illustrate how the algorithm works. Errors made while using the algorithm of a moving window are analyzed. A structure of a new algorithm was presented. Software, created based on the algorithm, was used for computer simulation.

This paper present soldier communication net scheme, which survives and operates in the 21st century battlefield environment. First, it analyzes the features, the need, function of the soldier communication net on the 21st century battlefield environment. Secondly it presents a layered model of the soldier communication net, derived from the OSI theory, and discusses the design of the 3 layers, link layer, link controller and input/output applications layer. Thirdly, it present some key technical discussion concerning with the direct-sequence-spread-spectrum communication, code/decode and low power consumption. Finally, it gives the conclusion that spread spectrum time division system is the best scheme of soldier communication net.

Today's radar exploitation system utilize information from both Ground Moving Target Indication (GMTI) and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) obtained from various airborne platforms. GMTI detects and supports the classification of moving targets, whereas SAR detects and supports the classification of stationary targets. However, there is currently no ability to integrate the information from these two classes of radars in tracking targets that execute sequences of move-stop-move maneuvers. The solutions of this dilemma is the development of a Continuous Tracking (CT) architecture that uses distinctive GMTI and SAR features to associate stationary and moving target detections through move-stop-move maneuvers. This paper develops a theoretical model and present corresponding numeric computations of the performance of the CT syste. This theory utilizes a two- state Markov process to model the successive SAR and MTI detections are derived from typical traffic and sensor behaviors. This analysis of the sensor characteristics and the underlying traffic model provides a foundation in designing a CT systems with the maximum possible performance.

Individual soldier geolocation in situations such as urban warfare where loss of Global Positioning System (GPS) track can impact mission success has become a critical problem. Concepts such as RF 'time difference of arrival' and 'dead reckoning' techniques have not demonstrated their ability to support navigation reliably inside buildings on their own. Inertial navigation is the only technology that operates independence of external assets. The advent of micromechanical inertial sensor technology has resulting low-cost, very small, low-power navigation system capable of fitting in a soldier's boot. A miniature navigator consisting of three micromechanical gyroscope and accelerometer packages, including supporting application- specific integrated circuit chips, and capable of operating in support of such a mission has been developed. However, because of accelerometer and gyroscope drift, navigating inertially over long time periods using even the most precise and most expensive inertial senor available today remains close to impossible. Inertial augmentation techniques are therefore required, and the concept of personal inertial navigation systems aided by zero velocity updating of the accelerometers with each footfall has been examined and shown to be sufficient to determine the location of an individual soldier accurately within a large building complex after hours of operation. In addition to the accelerometer, updates of the gyro via zero attitude rate techniques is an additional means to further enhance the position accuracy, as well as to provide an attitude reference in support of soldier carried targeting sensors.

The Advanced Displays and Interactive Displays Federated Laboratory is in its fourth year of a five year research project. Diverse area of research such as intelligent information processing techniques for the display of course of action, augmented reality, tactile displays, bimodal speech recognition and other cognitive engineering result are being readied for transition to various Army customers. In this paper we describe some of the research results along with their potential Army applications.

One of the top-level processing functions defined in the Joint Directors of Laboratories data fusion processing mode is Level 4 processing. This is a meta-process that monitors the on-going data fusion process to optimize the fusion of data. To date, two basic approaches have been used for Level 4 processing. The first approach uses classic constrained optimization methods to optimize a measure of performance of the data fusion process. The second approach treats Level 4 processing as a classical control problem, invovling dynamic sensor tasking, to meet performance objectives. Both of these approaches generally ignore the human-in-the-loop user, and treat sensor as relatively unintelligent devices. Recent development in smart sensor, improved models of dynamic sensor performance, and advances in cognitive psychology suggests that a new perspective on Level 4 processing is needed. In this paper, the concept of Level 4 processing is extended to exploit these rapid evolutions, resulting in increased performance of data fusion systems.

This article describes work that has been undertaken to develop a suite demonstrator for the evaluation of the digital High Angular Resolution Laser Irradiance Detector (HARLID). HARLID is a module designed to estimate the angel of arrival of a laser beam. It response to radiation ranging from 400 to 1700 nm and covers a 96 degree field of view (FOV) with a resolution of +/- 1 degree in a plane. The main goal of the suite demonstrator is to characterize new generations of HARLIDs and to provide means to evaluate new configurations in order to establish the requirements for the protection of military platforms with laser warning receivers (LWR). The suite demonstrator is a good example of how an Ethernet network can be used to share information between various senors over a specialized network. Moreover, it allows building and studying a plurality of configurations without regard to the separation and the structure between the detection units. To our knowledge, it is the first time that such as approach is used in the field of LWR.

The Small Unit Operations Situation Awareness System program will develop a communications, navigation, and situation awareness system for tactical employment by widely dispersed dismounted warriors operating in highly restrictive environments. The program significantly advances the technology base for robust, highly reliable, secure communications, position determination, navigation, and situation awareness while inside and/or adjacent to buildings, tunnels and other urban structures, caves, mountainsides, natural overhands, and under double canopy foliage.

This paper provides an overview of a major weapon system, the Abrams Main Battle Tank, as it relates to the integration of EMbedded Battle Command and Control element is essential to the tanks future role in the Army as they focus more on increased organizational effectiveness and less on individual platforms. The Abrams is poised to field the Abrams System Enhancement Package with its 2nd generation of Command and Control.