Combined Constellation Sensor Simulation Environment (C2S2E)

A critical requirement in modern warfare is maintaining an accurate and comprehensive picture of the battlespace at all times.  The ability to maintain this situational awareness is made more difficult by the ever increasing role technology plays in todays military.  Advanced sensors, platforms, and weapons systems continue to provide important advantages when defending against a changing enemy.  Assets such as the Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) must collaborate with a diverse collection of sensors and platforms to provide ground situation information.  This complex group of air, ground, communication, and command and control resources is combined to provide connectivity between forces in many locations. To take advantage of these advancing technologies, a constellation of sensors and platforms such as these must be properly managed to yield timely information to all participants.  Recognizing this need, the DoD is seeking methods to evaluate constellation management techniques in a flexible, simulation environment. The proposed EDAptive® SPARCS solution meets these needs by delivering a flexible framework for sensor constellation modeling and the evaluation and comparison of control and optimization algorithms. The resulting capabilities will result in new methods for developing sensor fusion algorithms and allow the MDA to continue to expand and improve its global sensor network with confidence. BENEFIT: The need for delivering a comprehensive and accurate picture of the battlespace during an engagement is critical to the success of the Air Force.  Any solutions that can aid in this goal will offer tremendous benefit to the Air Forces objectives.  By providing better methods for managing and optimizing sensor resources, the Air Force can continue to deploy more advanced sensors in more places around the world.  By increasing the complexity and size of their sensor constellations, the Air Force can continue to improve their ability to accurately monitor situations on the ground and support effective decision making. The driving force behind our proposal is to fulfill this need.  By combining an intuitive visual modeling framework with reusable sensor models and resource management algorithms, our solution will improve the Air Forces ability to capture knowledge about its sensor s and platforms and transform this knowledge into useful information.        The SPARCS product will be of value wherever large amounts of data must be fused to provide up-date information.  We intend to focus our Phase I commercialization efforts on Air Force applications, in systems such as JSTARS.  Our first targets after the Air Force will be our current MDA, Navy and Army customers. We will introduce the SPARCS product to our contacts in the Air Force, Navy, and Army.  From there we plan to aggressively market SPARCS to the rest of the DoD as well. In addition, SPARCS will have significant industry applicability in the transportation and aerospace fields and we will pursue licensing opportunities in these markets upon product maturity.