Mission-Optimized Aerial Cloud Environment (MACE)

To more quickly analyze sensor and other data near the tactical edge, allowing faster reaction and ensuring mission success, the Air Force has expressed the need for an agile tactical cloud capable of in-mission data processing and storage.Architecture Technology Corporation proposes Mission-Optimized Aerial Cloud Environment (MACE), managing resources distributed across multiple aerial vehicles to provide efficient computing and storage for cooperating and competing sensor exploitation tasks to meet mission priorities.MACE allows intra-aircraft computing capabilities to be distinguished so special resource capabilities, such as GPGPU or FPGA image processing functionality, can be dedicated to software that maximizes mission success.MACE ensures the needs of high-priority software tasks can be anticipated and resources will be available to meet those needs.It provides flexible management of an inter-vehicle cloud, matching active software to available resources even as resources change, and implements unique features tailored to an inter-aircraft cloud by anticipating and preparing for individual aircraft leaving or joining a cluster.MACE autonomously plans resource use based on pre-mission planning, but dynamically accommodates new mission tasks and unpredictable ensemble participants.