Date: Jan 15, 2010 Source: ARMY SBIR Success Stories (
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Soldiers have a critical need for situational awareness and real time communications. Current systems have limitations due to a reliance on fixed infrastructure equipment that slows deployment, reduces visibility, and limits reach back communications outside the proximity of the fixed reader equipment.
The task of manually tracking contents, location, equipment, and materials in containers can be an enormous and highly complex job. Maintaining situational awareness in indoor and urban environments is difficult because buildings, walls, and other obstacles obstruct Radio Frequency (RF) propagation.
Under a Phase II SBIR contract, IWT addressed this capability gap and developed a rugged, multi-band transceiver and successfully demonstrated its geo-location capabilities. IWT developed a cost and power efficient asset tracking system based on a wireless ad hoc mesh network with geolocation capability that provides real time communications and situational awareness without the need for infrastructure equipment. The system consists of a low cost, small size multi-band radio platform that can be expanded for broader applications to include Blue Force Tracking, communication-on-the-move, sensor networks, and smart grid systems. It also includes a localized mesh network consisting of both one-way and two-way tags that provide a tiered, economical, and scalable architecture based on cost and power consumption. The local network utilizes RF waveforms that are optimized for harsh RF conditions, which includes high path loss and severe multi-path concerns. It also incorporates embedded Global Positioning Systems that establish an anchor point for the absolute position of network tags.
Phase III Impacts
To date, IWT has received $594K in combined Phase II Plus funding from the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Center and the Army Research Laboratory and a $700K U.S. Army Commercialization Pilot Program contract to develop a field-testable prototype asset tracking system.
