System Architecture for Efficient Location Specific Mobile Information Access for the Warfighter (SELMA)

To address the mission critical information needs of mobile warfighters on the battlefield, Architecture Technology Corporation (ATC) will design the components for a novel middleware service called System Architecture for Efficient Location specificMobile information Access for the warfighter (SELMA). SELMA mechanisms will sense warfighter location and enable secure and intelligent dissemination of information to warfighters at critical locations on the battlefield, hence enhancing the decisionmaking capability of the warfighter.SELMA is an innovative technology that provides many new capabilities enhancing the situational awareness of the mobile warfighter. SELMA services will support optimized delivery of heterogeneous information over low-bandwidth, high-latency, error-pronewireless links. In addition to this, SELMA will provide novel location based information push mechanisms that poll data from heterogeneous servers and disseminate critical data such as real-time battlefield alerts to warfighters based on their geographiclocation. Included in SELMA are novel mechanisms for disseminating map based geospatial information to handheld devices on the battlefield. SELMA also includes mechanisms to provide services like voice enabled browsing and text to speech conversion formobile devices. In short, SELMA will provide a foundation to build efficient decision making systems for the warfighter. SELMA mechanisms will address the needs of army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) by providing a powerful capability for the dissemination of situational awareness data to on-the-move warfighters. We also envision the location based information deliverymechanisms provided by SELMA to be particularly useful in building homeland defense applications. Civilian applications for this technology are in the areas of Law enforcement as well as in disaster management/response to calamities.