G-Hardened Radio Hardware Technology

The proposed SBIR will develop a shock hardened self forming ad hoc mesh network radio that will support remote sensors and that is capable of being fired from a 40mm grenade or mortar launcher or machine gun. The radio will be extremely low power and low cost to enable long operation times and high volume production at realistic budgets. McQ defined a design approach for the Phase I program that developed and refined the technical concepts based upon our existing hardware and firmware. McQ has over 12 years of experience with the design and development of shock hardened electronic sensors and radios for gun launched and unretarded air deployment operations. During Phase I we used our existing mesh network radios as the experimental basis for a demonstration of the sensor network functionality. These radios use commercially available components and have proven communications performance. They also already met the size and weight constraints for the final design. Also during Phase I we presented the design approach for this SBIR Phase II effort that will achieve energy consumption performance goals. The plan also provides for the delivery of a moderate volume (100+) sensor nodes suitable for a practical deployment. Using engineering and manufacturing techniques that are currently being used with our miniature disposable iScout(TM) sensor system, we will develop and manufacture a quantity of these G-hardened nodes and demonstrate them in this Phase II effort.