Command and Control for the Internet of Things

Network-Centric Warfare is defined as information sharing and collaboration with a wide variety of ground, sea, air, and space assets. This approach enhances the quality of battlefield information and situational awareness.

Today, intelligence is being built into these assets to enable autonomous activity rather than simple control. As a result, the reliability, security, safety and manageability of the systems controlling these   devices are paramount.

Surveillance and intelligence payloads of the assets are often provided by different manufacturers. So, to use open standards such as IMA (Integrated Modular Avionic), OpenVPX, DDS (Data Distribution Service) and Virtualization is most important for cooperation and interoperability between manufacturers.

A significant amount information flow between payloads/assets also requires high performance data mining capabilities to assist with real time decision making.

Sensor & Data Aggregation

Today’s unmanned vehicles are becoming more autonomous thanks to their own complex payloads which perform intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance, and include sensors.  Also, advanced sensor platforms such as Airborne Early Warning and Control Aircraft need to have capability to merge sensor data as communicate to other assets.

As a result, sensors or sensor payloads shall be intelligent node as a component of the IoT.

Device & Control

Again, today’s battlefield is becoming connected. From hand-held computers of soldiers to unmanned vehicles, Command Centers must manage thousands of connected devices and produced data that must be analyzed for situational awareness. 

Gateway

The beyond of new generation devices, there are significant amount old generation devices which are in usage.  Manufacturers shall set up Gateway infrastructure to provide data communication between assets.

Network

Military networking utilizes a combination of networking capabilities, including SatCom. As an example, devices can be connected over small form factor Rugged Switches in a vehicle. When considering multiple devices, IPv6 is gaining importance to increase reliability and security.

Data Center

With petabytes of data generated in real-time battlefield assets every hour, a trusted, reliable data center is required to process and storage this data. At this point, Carrier Grade Linux and Open standard ATCA Blades provide %99,999 high availability for reliability. Also Deep Package Inspection Applications and Multiple Independent Levels of Security infrastructure provide security.

Cloud & Business Logic

The connected battlefield, network-centric warfare, and the Global Combat Support System are just a few examples of how today’s military uses a cloud infrastructure to accomplish its mission.