Roger That
Written by J.B. Bissell
CGF 2011 Volume: 3 Issue: 3 (July)
On the popular television series 24, counter-terrorism agent Jack Bauer rarely went an entire episode without utilizing a smartphone or personal digital assistant (PDA) of some sort. He always got his money’s worth too. Sure, he’d use the device to simply talk with his fellow agents, but just as often he’d have one of the analysts back at headquarters send crucial files such as building floor plans, mug shots or weapons diagrams right to his phone. Obviously, Jack Bauer was a fictional character and his equipment—and its capabilities— didn’t necessarily have to live up to real-world standards. That said, 24 is probably a pretty good indicator of where communications technology is headed—or maybe where it already is.
“PDAs are proliferating and the capabilities for connecting are astounding,” said Jeff Meyer, vice president of product management at Seattle-based CoCo Communications. “The message we want to get across is that if our armed forces and other agencies are using PDAs in the field, there’s no reason they shouldn’t always have connectivity to their data network. Coast Guard members in particular should be able to maintain connectivity to all their operational systems and all their network systems no matter where they are: in the air, at sea or in the hull of a vessel doing patrol. The technology exists to connect and to connect securely.”
Extending the Edge
Of course, it’s one thing to be able to connect when all the conditions are just right and there’s a network hot spot nearby. That, however, is not always the case; in fact, many times Coast Guard operators find themselves in situations where transmission signals are simply nonexistent.
“That’s what we specialize in,” said Robb Monkman, CoCo Communications’ marketing manager. “Really bringing communications to the warfighter or public safety personnel who are operating at the edges of networks where there is no connectivity— and by edges of networks we’re talking about areas where there’s little or no infrastructure in place at all.”
One of the most common of these “edges” for the Coast Guard is down in the belly of a large vessel where the massive steel hull can easily swallow up communication signals and leave boarding teams in a potentially dangerous situation without the ability to talk to headquarters or their commander back on the cutter ship. CoCo Communications’ CoCo Node software creates a mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) so that men and women in this exact situation can extend their connectivity.
“Typically, when you think of networks, you think of fixed entities, such as commercial networks with their towers,” said Monkman. “You can imagine their coverage being like circles around those towers, and they’re covering certain areas with those circles. But the circles tend not to exist when you’re out fighting a war or on some sort of mission that the Coast Guard would face. So what our MANET provides is connectivity in that last tactical mile.”
CoCo Node can be installed on any Windows- or Linux-based laptop computer or PDA; it then “essentially turns those devices into mobile mesh routers”—so everybody who is carrying one is also acting as a roving connection point. These individual connection points are critical because it means that the network isn’t relying on any single operator’s piece of equipment to maintain functionality. “Say your phone is acting as a router in our network,” continued Monkman, “and something happened and for whatever reason you dropped out; the network would still operate. By definition, a mobile ad-hoc network is one that self-forms and self-heals automatically—it doesn’t rely on any single point of failure.”
To increase robustness, CoCo developed a lightweight tactical mesh router that runs the CoCo Node software and can be used in conjunction with the laptops and PDAs. It’s really just an uberrugged, battery-powered, push-button-on repeater, but the overall usefulness should not be understated. “Coast Guard boarding teams could breadcrumb these tactical mesh routers throughout the ship they’re inspecting,” explained Monkman, “thereby extending their network below deck and ensuring connectivity wherever they needed to go.”
Eyes in the Sky
For the Coast Guard’s Project Hawkeye it was determined that communication and data connectivity needed to go some 20 miles off the American coast. The goal was to more effectively monitor marine traffic in and out of the country’s ports; the challenge was how to best link a host of cameras, sensors, radar systems and vessel identification equipment and then beam all of the information back to a command point.
The objective was met by Motorola’s PTP (point-to-point) 400 Series radios and backhaul links which “interconnect five of Hawkeye’s networks,” explained Mark McNulty, MSSI vice president, U.S. Federal Government Markets, Motorola Solutions. “It gives the Coast Guard the ability to identify and track vessels in harbor and coastal waters, giving watch officers the ability to make operational decisions based on real-time information.”
It might sound like a rather straightforward task—collecting data and relaying it to a computer screen or forwarding it on to an operator in the field, and certainly recent advancements in technology have made the entire process more efficient—but keep in mind the environment in which this system is operating.
“The links, which mostly included over-water paths, had to be extremely reliable in highly congested areas and during unpredictable weather,” said McNulty. “The individual links within the backhaul system vary from site to site and are exposed to extreme conditions. For example, the links in Key West have to function in salty, hot tropical conditions, while the links in Boston would encounter extreme winters and icy conditions, not to mention being located in dense, high-interference urban areas and having to transmit and receive information over water where shipping traffic continuously blocks the communications path.”
Safety First
Although reliable communications, both at the peer-to-peer level and for entire systems, are definitely a top priority, safety is also crucial. Men and women of the Coast Guard can find themselves in a potentially deadly situation when they must make use of their electronic devices in the immediate vicinity of gasoline or oil or other dangerous substances.
In March 2011, Thales Communications Inc., headquartered in Clarksburg, Md., solved at least part of this problem when they announced that their Liberty Multiband Land Mobile Radio (LMR) had been certified Factory Mutual Intrinsic Safe. This “ensures that it can be operated in an explosive environment and will not trigger ignition in the presence of flammable or combustible material,” explained Steve Nichols, director of business development, Department of Homeland Security and Public Safety, for Thales. “It can be used on high risk vessels, hazardous cargo vessels, chemical and oil refineries and in other hazardous environments. The Liberty radio meets and exceeds all defined requirements of the Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection, Secret Service, Transportation Security Administration and first responders nationwide. We believe we have met all that physics can provide in one radio.”
They’ve also made it as easy to use as possible, which might not be quite as important as the safety factors but is certainly convenient out in the field. “The Liberty radio is software upgradeable and does not need to be returned to the factory for upgrades,” said Nichols. “In addition, it’s capable of receiving 256 bit AES encryption keys over the air using the current USCG Project 25 Over the Air Re-key system. This improves communications security by allowing secure frequent key changes without the radios having to return to the maintenance facility for manual re-keying.”
Open Air
Transmission security is obviously vital for many of the Coast Guard’s—and other similar agencies’—assignments, but sometimes the goal of radio communication is for as many people as possible to be able to participate. In fact, sometimes open dialogue is just as critical to mission success as protected conversations. “During national special security events, episodic events and other 911 scenarios, the Coast Guard requires immediate multi-agency, interoperable communications,” Nichols explained. “Currently, because of fragmented frequency bands and fragmented modes, multiple radios are needed to communicate between the Department of Defense, local law enforcement, firefighters, emergency medical personnel and other first responders. Thales’ Liberty Multiband LMR provides the needed interoperable communications capabilities in a single radio.” Another benefit of the Liberty is that it operates on a standalone point-to-point or point-to-multi-point infrastructure, so even if all the nearby transmitting towers are down, first responders can still seamlessly talk to each other. It’s really “interoperability in the palm of your hand,” said Nichols.
The bottom line is that as technology continues to advance, interoperability solutions also improve. It’s no longer just about being able to communicate between various radio signals. Cell phones and the Internet are now playing a major role in solving this specific broadcast challenge—and making it much easier to get mission-critical information disseminated to everybody who needs it in a timely, efficient manner.
“Our Tactical Radio Gateway is a product that can be used not only to connect disparate radios,” said CoCo’s Monkman, “but it also turns radio traffic into Internet Protocol (IP) traffic and then can connect in any PDA or laptop.” In other words, the Coast Guard could use the Tactical Radio Gateway to link communications between VHF and other marine radios aboard a cutter ship and the PDA devices being carried by their operatives. “Radio over IP is a technology that we specialize in,” Monkman continued. “We’re able to bridge the interoperability gap between LMR and IP. “And once you bridge that gap, you can take full advantage of all the mobile ad-hoc networking capabilities of these networks that don’t rely on infrastructure, that don’t rely on any single point of failure. In a war or emergency situation when a server or infrastructure could easily go down, with our technology— because there is no central point of infrastructure—there really is no central point of failure for these communications.”
The Future is Now
While all of these impressive possibilities might seem like something straight out of 24 or some other exciting television series, the fact of the matter is that these sorts of solutions—as well as a host of other improvements, new developments and communication tools—that seemed out of reach just years ago are now becoming readily available.
Thanks are due at least in part to companies such as American Reliance Inc. (AMREL) in El Monte, Calif. “We don’t invent technology here,” said Richard S. Lane, who serves as vice president of strategic business development. “What we’re very good at is taking technologies as they emerge and mature and integrating them for the Coast Guard and other similar organizations. That’s our true skill set.” Such examples are the DB6, a handheld computer that runs Windows 7 and Linux, and the DB6-B, which has a specialty module that “adds full multimodal biometric capabilities, including dual iris, face, and finger capture and EBTS file storage and matching,” Lane explained.
AMREL’s latest integration is generating even more excitement. It’s a fully rugged, Android-based smartphone that’s set to debut in the fall of 2011. “It’s called the AMREL BattlePhone,” said Lane. “It’s got a five-inch glass display, it can go down to six feet of water, it’s got a man overboard sensor in it and a biometric module on it … it’s just an over-the-top, killer product. This is what the Coast Guard really wants.”
Indeed, because what the Coast Guard really wants—needs—is reliable communications in extreme situations. Whether that calls for a BattlePhone, an interoperable radio system, data collection across the open ocean or foolproof Internet connectivity, mission success depends on it. Fortunately, the technology to meet this need has arrived. ♦