Information Warfare Sensor and Wireless Network Using TM-UWB

This proposal details a low cost, low risk, innovative approach to implementing a network for connecting sensors to C4 systems within a submarine. Two devices will be built. The first device will eliminate the problem of powering sensors by using asingle wire cable to provide power to the sensors. That same wire will also serve as the communication path for all the sensor signals attached to the single wire cable. The second device will be fully wireless. Both devices will be based on a newinnovative approach to high bandwidth communication called ultra-wideband communication, where pulses pseudo-randomly modulated in time encode the information, rather than the conventional modulation of continuous waveforms. The wireless sensor link (WSL)and single wire sensor link (SWSL) are not two separate systems. In fact, our concept allows a SWSL unit to be converted to a WSL unit by simply pulling off the battery and antenna module and replacing it with a cable connection module. Likewise, thereceiver unit is also the same, allowing signals to reach it via a receiving antenna or cable, but otherwise the electronics are the same. This is because the data is encoded in the same way for both cases.A key opportunity for TM-UWB radio is theindustrial wireless LAN market. In 1997, wired LAN equipment sales for Internet service providers alone was $18B, while wireless LAN equipment sales were a mere $213M - a gap that is beginning to close even as the market scale increases. The system wepropose offers significant flexibility in using both single wire and wireless nodes in the same network, with the same sensor package, and the same receiving hardware. For equipment health monitoring, our approach is compelling in that it provides asolution to the fundamental problem of how to power the sensors comprising a sensor network. We believe our system could easily become the routine method to interconnect sensors in future military and civilian health monitoring applications.