Research Summaries

Back Operational Aerial Communication Layer

Fiscal Year 2018
Division Research & Sponsored Programs
Department Naval Research Program
Investigator(s) Davis, Duane T.
Prince, Charles D.
Iatrou, Steve J.
Singh, Gurminder
Gibson, John H.
Sponsor NPS Naval Research Program (Navy)
Summary Extending tactical networks to highly-dispersed or remotely-inserted, fast-reaction forces continues to be a challenge for military and disaster response forces. This research continues the exploration and experimentation of alternative courses of action to address the need for beyond-line-of-site communications to support Enhanced MAGTF Operations (EMO). The research conducted to date characterized the aerial assets available as platforms to support communications relay systems, explored potential commercial off-the-shelf radio systems that may provide encrypted tunnel support for tactical IP traffic, and the capabilities of high altitude balloon platforms to carry such radios. It included initial field experiments to explore initial courses of action. This research will continue this effort by the supporting a series of faculty-led, student-executed field experiments that continue the investigation and exploration of support for extending survivable tactical networks. Of particular interest are solutions that leverage small swarms of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles to provide communications on-the-move in satellite and RF-degraded/denied environments. The research will consider techniques, waveforms and platforms, both commercial-off-the-shelf and repurposing of organic (Government off-the-shelf) systems, as well as emerging hardware-agnostic control algorithms.
Keywords
Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal