Innovative Plug and Fight Mission Module Interfaces

The purpose of this project is to develop an innovative plug and fight architecture to support the high speed information exchange between various shipboard command, control and communication subsystems. The structure of this system is based on a very high speed Wireless Local Area Network (Wireless LAN) and advanced pervasive computing technologies such as UPnP and JINI. The major advantages of this innovative system include: (1) increasing the rate of data transfer above 20 Mbits/s to fulfill the requirements of self-diagnosis, autonomous control, and secure data transfer; (2) increasing the mobility, scalability, and reliability of the onboard network system; and (3) defining common protocols and procedures to guarantee interoperability among different subsystems onboard a ship. In Phase I, efforts are focused on identifying requirements, developing the system architecture, and conducting analytical/experimental tests and demonstration for results needed to establish the baseline system design and performance characteristics, and in Phase II, we will develop a complete hardware/software prototype system for experimentation and/or field tests.