The Army has selected the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Wireless Network after Next (WNaN) radios to support the Network Integration Evaluation (NIE) 13.1 experiment at Fort Bliss, Texas.
The WNaN team consists of DARPA; Raytheon ‘s [RTN] BBN Technologies, which provides the applications, networking and integration capabilities for this next generation platform; and Cobham Sensor Systems LLC, which supplies innovative, low cost hardware.
The WNaN radio provides a robust mobile ad hoc network with dynamic spectrum access, which senses which senses which spectrum is in use and automatically shifts to the best available frequency. The network also provides disruption tolerant networking, allowing the network to continue to move message traffic toward its intended destination even when there are outages or interruptions, and then delivers the message when the necessary path becomes available. The network also has multiple cooperative transceivers on a compact, hand-held platform, meaning it can scale in density or size and operate efficiently over multiple channels.
Running from October through the end of November, the Army’s NIE 13.1 is the fourth in the semi-annual soldier evaluations to ensure the service’s tactical network is integrated and maturing. The NIE is managed by the triumvirate of the Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC), the Brigade Modernization Command (BMC) and the System of Systems Integration (SoSI) directorate.
These innovative networking technologies allow WNaN radios to operate in dense signal environments without dropping calls, make mission command easier with the ability to easily set up as many as 128 call groups, and maintain situational awareness even when communications are interrupted.
Because the WNaN software is delivered with low cost, commercially available components, WNaN radios can enable soldiers at every operational level to have a reliable communications device.
The WNaN system participated in NIE 12.1 as a System Under Evaluation following a series of demonstrations where WNaN surpassed scalability requirements by successfully transmitting voice and data traffic across 102 nodes in a tactical environment.
“We have tested the WNaN network extensively, and WNaN performance exceeds the demands of today’s Army,” said Jason Redi, senior director of engineering and WNaN principal investigator for Raytheon BBN Technologies. In coordination with DARPA, the Army purchased 125 Version 4 –next generation–WNaN radios in support of the NIE 13.1 experiment.
The WNaN team said the version 4 radio dramatically reduces size, weight and power requirements compared with the earlier version used at NIE 12.1 and it increases battery life to more than 10 hours.