Ultra Wideband Communications Network for Sensors

Situational awareness and communications are critical to achievingtoday's mission of the Objective Force. Objective Forcewarfighters must possess a secure and reliable means to rapidly assesstheir environment, react quickly, and initiate combat on their terms.Failure to do so jeopardizes the safety of the soldier and potentiallythe safety of innocent civilians. A key aspect of improved situationalawareness and communications is ad-hoc sensor networks which providewarfighters and commanders with timely integrated intelligence.During Phase I, Innovative Wireless Technologies (IWT) and ourpartner Time Domain Corporation (TDC) successfully demonstrated thefeasibility of an ultra wideband ad-hoc sensor network. IWT's advancedUWB simulation models allowed us to effectively characterize theanticipated propagation response, LPI/LPD, and anti-jam capabilitiesof UWB waveforms. These models were successfully verified on TDChardware using embedded spatially diverse antennas. IWT identifieda suitable commercial ad-hoc networking protocol and coupled thisprotocol with a highly redundant and energy efficient routing protocol.Phase II will demonstrate the validity of the feasibility analysiswith the development of a multi-node UWB ad-hoc network. Range,LPI/LPD, and anti-jam capabilities will be demonstrated as wellas small size and low power consumption achievable with UWB.A successful Phase II program has potential for future applicationto military sensor initiatives such as Soldier Level IntegratedCommunications and Micro-Internetted Unattended Ground Sensors.As history has shown, many commercial applications are developedfrom advancements in military technology. IWT has existing relationshipswith key players in both the military and commercial sectors.Commercial markets that are targets for UWB technology includehigh speed communications, security networks, and imaging.IWT has targeted the utility industry as a potential commercialpath, in particular automated meter reading where the networkingand reachback capability of a system will have significant costsavings to the utility provider.