Minimalist Wearable Mesh Network (MINIMEN) System for Soldier Training Feasibility, Tradeoff, and Demonstration

San Diego Research Center (SDRC) and University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) offer a team of experts in wearable sensors, embedded networking, mesh networking, and military communication systems to study and demonstrate the feasibility of the overall system concept. We seek to define and design the overall system architecture model composed of the body-worn system, the wireless network, and the higher-layer sensor information processing. During Phase I, the primary focus is to systematically characterize the interplay between the functions running on the micro-server node worn by the soldiers, the network protocols, the radio technology, the network topology, and the querying framework, and identifying candidate mechanisms and technologies for each one of these based on simulation. We will leverage three groups of prior and ongoing research to prototype a lab-scale system to validate the feasibility of the architecture concepts and subsystem technologies: (i) the large body of prior work on wireless sensor networks and related tools and technologies developed at UCLA; (ii) wearable sensor system development in the context of solider training (e.g., OneTESS); and (iii) robust RF communication system for Army testing instrumentation being designed by SDRC. Specific objectives include identifying the choices of radio technology, network topology options, and routing protocols, and characterizing their performance via simulation modeling and experimental measurements on performance (latency, capacity) and energy metrics.