SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT Situational Awareness: From Command to Soldier Level
LTE Networking Aids Battlespace Visualization Systems By leveraging commercial LTE and video conferencing technologies, system developers can deliver real-time situational awareness. Ray Adensamer, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Radisys Harry Jensen, Director of Operations, Aerospace & Defense, Radisys
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n today’s battlespace, communications technology is a key component of military success. Combat soldiers who can understand surrounding situations and react quickly have an advantage over the enemy. This entails having realtime complete situational awareness (SA). At all times, soldiers need to know where they are, who their targets are and where those targets are located. To achieve this, the military must leverage the success of commercial communications technologies to deliver “battlespace visualization.”
Commercial Communication Technologies
During the past ten years the military has begun implementing COTS communications technologies, leading to rapid advances in command and control (C2) capabilities. However, military mobile communication networks and video networking technologies must evolve to keep up with the innovations occurring in the commercial space. Figure 1 shows an illustration of the advances of commercial communications and military communications (Joint Tactical Radio System) technologies. 22
COTS Journal | December 2013
Today’s soldiers already use smartphones and tablets in their personal life to view YouTube and other video content over Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks. In contrast, today’s military wireless video communication technologies are slower, unwieldy and inefficient. LTE offers soldiers a clear advantage when it comes to two-way communications, delivering lower latency, faster speeds and a more efficient architecture than the latest wireless military network technologies. Using COTS smartphones or tablets to connect troops in an LTE military network—rather than limiting them with clunky, proprietary line-of-sight RF or bandwidth-constrained satellite transmissions systems—will ultimately lead to enhanced situational awareness. In addition, advances in commercial video media processing capabilities can deliver significant benefits for military communications. Media processing enables the delivery of rich media services, such as video conferencing, mixing in security camera feeds and overlaying maps and text. The combination of mobile LTE technologies, commercial smartphone and tablet devices, and video media pro-
cessing and mixing capabilities will deliver enhanced battlespace visualization.
Battlespace Visualization Requirements
Battlespace visualization provides combat soldiers with a tactical advantage by enabling complete situational awareness. This includes the improved ability to observe, orient, decide and act, or OODA. There are four requirements to maximizing the OODA process. The first is to leverage commercially available Radio Access Network (RAN) and conferencing technology to deliver improved communication capabilities, along with cost savings. The next is to use commercially available smartphones and tablets where appropriate to deliver terminal cost savings. The third is to capture and communicate pertinent data to decision makers and troops on the ground quickly. And the final requirement is to show the right data, to the right people, at the right time. LTE networks, with the latest broadband technology (LTE-Advanced), can deliver up to 1 Gbit/s of data, making it an ideal network to deploy at the tactical edge of combat areas. Using LTE-ready