By Barry Rosenberg
Oct 06, 2010
“We don’t fight by ourselves in the real world,” said Rosie Bauer, branch chief of the network operations branch of the Space and Terrestrial Communications Directorate at the Army Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center. “We are joint with the Navy, Marines and Air Force. Whether we do it effectively is another question. But we fight the battle together. What we're trying to do now is make sure that whatever we develop is done on a joint perspective and not on a stovepipe.”
To break down those communications barriers, CERDEC has developed a virtual ad hoc network test bed, located at Fort Monmouth, N.J. The VAN is a network gatekeeper. Any application developed for the network must first prove it can interoperate with radios, waveforms and satellites via the VAN test bed before it can join a communications network.
Army pursues vision of common architecture An interview with Maj. Gen. Nickolas Justice is the commanding general of the Army Research, Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM) at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., the Army’s technology development lead
DS: As we speak, you are heading to the airport to visit a company working with you on RDECOM’s Victory Architecture for vehicle communications and situational awareness. Tell us about those efforts.
Justice: I am heading to San Antonio to talk to some engineers about one of their system-of-systems engineering efforts to help us create an architecture for integrating electronics in vehicles. This is an effort that we’ve been working internally for a while. We’ve got a proposed architecture that we are about to present to industry, and we will be setting up some workshops for industry to help critique the plan so that we can come up with the right standards for integrating vehicles.
DS: What are some of the specifics of the Victory Architecture?
Justice: We want to be smart about how we integrate communications and technologies into the vehicles. We want electronics that do diagnostics on the health of the vehicle. We want our communications systems and our sensors to all work off the same data bus. Here is something that we want to leverage, for example.
A vehicle will have several systems installed that need access to GPS data, and what ends us happening is that I have multiple GPS products on the vehicle. Instead, it would be better if GPS was inherent on the vehicle and was able to feed data to multiple demand systems, such as Blue Force Tracker. I’ve got a source for GPS integrated into the vehicle, and other people can share it so that we don’t end up paying for multiple devices. We don’t have to create multiple installation kits and all the associated cable, and we can take advantage of the data bus in the vehicle to attach any kind of electronic device.
Justice: I am heading to San Antonio to talk to some engineers about one of their system-of-systems engineering efforts to help us create an architecture for integrating electronics in vehicles. This is an effort that we’ve been working internally for a while. We’ve got a proposed architecture that we are about to present to industry, and we will be setting up some workshops for industry to help critique the plan so that we can come up with the right standards for integrating vehicles.
DS: What are some of the specifics of the Victory Architecture?
Justice: We want to be smart about how we integrate communications and technologies into the vehicles. We want electronics that do diagnostics on the health of the vehicle. We want our communications systems and our sensors to all work off the same data bus. Here is something that we want to leverage, for example.
A vehicle will have several systems installed that need access to GPS data, and what ends us happening is that I have multiple GPS products on the vehicle. Instead, it would be better if GPS was inherent on the vehicle and was able to feed data to multiple demand systems, such as Blue Force Tracker. I’ve got a source for GPS integrated into the vehicle, and other people can share it so that we don’t end up paying for multiple devices. We don’t have to create multiple installation kits and all the associated cable, and we can take advantage of the data bus in the vehicle to attach any kind of electronic device.
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