Tactical Wireless Ground Sensor Network Deployment and Maintenance System

Toyon Research Corporation proposes to develop a portable tool for deployment planning, real-time monitoring, and maintenance of tactical wireless ground sensor networks. The tool will consist of a tablet (iPad, Android, or Windows) application and a desktop/cloud web service application. The tablet app will be used by the warfighter for planning, display, plan modification, sensor monitoring, and system maintenance. The app will be designed to operate standalone, but when connected (via Wi-Fi or cellular) will quietly retrieve relevant map data, target information, and sensor and radio models from the desktop. The desktop application will be based upon Toyon's Geospatial Analysis Planning Support Toolbox, a geographic information system (GIS) framework complete with an intuitive graphical user interface, detailed 3-D environment models (terrain, foliage, buildings, and weather), rapid line-of-sight algorithms, established communication models, and real-time network analysis. The sensor network planning algorithms will employ an iterative approach which utilizes A* search for coarse localization and combinatorial optimization for final location fine-tuning. The algorithms account for real equipment constraints (e.g., non- omni-directional sensors, scanning sensors, radar minimum detectable velocity, and network signal strength) and optimize heterogeneous sensor sets with multiple sensor modalities, providing accurate and timely results.