ARINC and its teammates recently completed a successful proof-of-principle demonstration of a wireless mesh solution for tracking military assets at an Army facility in Kuwait used to clean and process thousands of used military vehicles returning from theater.
As a result, ARINC expects the Army to expand the use of the Next Generation Wireless Communications for Logistical Applications (NGWC) program.
“The Army Sustainment Command (ASC) has determined our NGWC mesh network tracking solution improves their wash rack process,” says Robert Higginbotham, senior director, ARINC Advanced Systems. “We expect to hear soon that ASC wants to expand the use of our technology at Camp Arifjan, other Kuwait locations, and possibly into Afghanistan. We are anticipating another task order for this work.”
The NGWC solution is meant to simplify inventory and tracking.
ARINC’s partners on the program are Cubic‘s [CUB] Global Tracking Solutions business and Lunarline. Cubic got into the program through its acquisition last year of Impeva Labs, which offers solutions for global asset tracking (TR2, May 26, 2010).
Lunarline, which provides cyber security solutions and information assurance services, is supporting the secure design, implementation and testing of DoD’s information assurance requirements for the NGWC program.
ARINC and Impeva won a potential five-year, $20 million contract in 2006 from the Army Logistics Innovation Agency to develop and demonstrate wireless communications and automatic identification technology to help track DoD assets worldwide.
The NGWC solution for the recent demonstration included rugged battery-powered asset tags with GPS sensor technology and wireless mesh network capability that is self-forming and self-healing. The tags transmit precise location and a group of tags will self-assemble into a local mesh network to relay all tag locations efficiently. An operator can search for individual assets by their serial numbers and fine their locations in seconds. A Device Management Center keeps a central database of all tags and locations.
In the Camp Arifjan demonstration, the NGWC accurately tracked a sample of 200 vehicles in near-real time, from their initial storage locations through complete cleaning and processing to outgoing sterile storage lots. The incoming lot at Camp Arifjan can hold 10,000 vehicles.
ARINC is a portfolio company of the private equity firm The Carlyle Group.