Powered Submunition Communication Architecture

The battlefield of the future will be a `digital battlefield' - a place dominated by unmanned air, land, and sea combat vehicles, precision guided smart weapons, and real-time networked communications. The unmanned vehicle, whether operating on air, land,or sea provides force multiplication, lower costs, and reduced risk of casualties. As they exist today, the miniature autonomous munitions act independently to locate and attack the target. Their performance could be greatly enhanced by allowing groupsof munitions to share information and coordinate activities. Scientific Research Corporation (SRC) proposes to build and test a communication architecture for the Submunition vehicles that is based on the industry standard Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum(DSSS) chip-sets that re used heavily in unlicensed ISM band applications. Implementing a network radio using the DSSS approach is low-cost and rugged due to the commercial chip-set implementation and is relatively compact. However, the performance levelrequired for this application is not available with any commercial WLAN product. In contrast to commercial WLAN products, SRC is proposing to surround the core DSSS chip-set with numerous enhancements to the design to dramatically improve range andperformance. Rather than a maximum open-air range of 1000 feet, SRC's design will have a range of 4-6 miles. The network will use novel routing protocols that accommodate rapidly changing multi-hop path, and self-forming network as opposed to the typicalWLAN implementation where nodes are attached to a given access point and specific server found in the office network scenario.