Tracker's pocket-sized unit contains the potential for features ranging from Bluetooth to video display.
Who Goes There?
August / September 2008
Volume 6 Number 4
Scuring the homeland can mean different things to different people. For some, it means keeping a very close watch on our national borders to ensure that terrorists do not enter the country. Others would emphasize the protection of our infrastructure—€”utilities, communications, transportation, food, etc.—€”in the concept of homeland defense. But whether you are thinking about the borders or the infrastructure, homeland security and defense begin with the people who stand watch and the tools that support them. Two such tools that assist the homeland defender are Sandia National Laboratories' Virtual Presence and Extended Defense (VPED) system and the TacNet Tracker©.
Identifying the Threat
VPED is a "beyond-the-perimeter" sensor and assessment defense system. Each VPED system consists of sensor nodes (which support various types of sensors) and cluster nodes (which gather sensor data and provide video assessment capabilities). One of the most notable features of these systems is that the sensors, called the Sandia Compact Sensor Nodes (SCSN), can be located almost anywhere, from a mountain ravine to along a paved road. In order to operate in remote places that are not serviced by power or communication lines, the detection and reporting functions are self-contained.
VPED systems work with existing perimeter security systems to create detection zones where none previously existed. They reach farther out than current systems, enhancing fixed-site security by enabling response forces to have earlier warning of adversary attacks. The systems are flexible—€”they do not rely on any single sensor for detection—€”and are adaptable to the environment, whether it is thick forest or barren desert.
According to David Kitterman, former manager of Sandia's Virtual Presence and Extended Defense Department, an SCSN can detect pedestrians and vehicles and differentiate between them using a built-in seismic detector. "The ability to differentiate among the type of traffic along a secured pathway is crucial to making the decision to send responders or not. VPED can provide detection and video assessment along potential avenues of approach, whether roads, trails or ravines and can let responders know who or what is out there."
The SCSN is based on modified commercial hardware and enclosed in waterproof, off-the-shelf PVC pipe. Up to four external sensors can be connected using a flexible digital/analog interface through a waterproof connector. A built-in inertial sensor detects enclosure tampering. Individual sensors can be fused together to reduce nuisance and false alarms and the reporting rate can be controlled directly by the user. Two internal relays and a serial communication port can be commanded or configured to operate automatically in response to alarms by interfacing external devices such as illuminators, cameras, deterrents or voice synthesizers.
Each SCSN is powered from a single, D-sized lithium battery that provides eight years of continuous operation. In addition, cluster nodes are designed to be low power and can even operate using alternative energy sources such as solar panels. Sensors communicate (via RF links) to cluster nodes, which send data to a command center. Security operators can alert responders immediately, allowing evaluation of the situation before adversaries reach the perimeter.
Optimal performance of VPED systems is achieved when sensor and assessment systems are tuned to maximize their performance in the local terrain. VPED tuning times are currently a few hours during initial system installation. After installation, VPED sensor, fusion and cluster node parameters can be modified remotely, allowing operators to adjust sensitivity settings or algorithm settings without field maintenance.
Douglas Adams, a researcher in Sandia's Intrusion Detection Technologies department, says that VPED systems are not designed to replace traditional Perimeter Intrusion Detection and Assessment Systems (PIDAS), but to augment them to provide better security system effectiveness for pedestrian and vehicle threats. "VPED systems were designed for permanent installation, not as a tactical security system for quick field deployment at mobile sites," says Adams. "The system requires a security officer to consider their specific vulnerabilities and the threats they are facing. It requires the facility to anticipate probable attack scenarios, and determine which scenarios a VPED system will protect against." In doing so, a VPED system can be properly integrated into the existing security system to truly prepare the facility for the threats being addressed.
Going After the Bad Guys
If the VPED system warns of an intrusion, the security officers who respond could be using Sandia's TacNet Tracker as their secure communications device. TacNet Tracker is a wearable wireless device that provides secure real-time tracking and self-forming connectivity through integration of off-the-shelf components and customized software. Its parent device, Tactical Network (TacNet), is an in-vehicle communications network that provides a mobile operations force with secure access to critical data, such as real-time maps of resource positions, friends and foes.
John Hunter, member of the Security Systems and Analysis department and a developer of the TacNet Tracker, says that a significant advantage of Tracker is its ability to provide situational awareness to individuals in the field. "The Tracker lets a user in the field view information about any valid Tracker node, that is, vehicles in a convoy or individuals with TacNet Trackers. Because it employs Motorola Mesh's multi-hopping capabilities, the Tracker can create secure paths around obstructions, such as hills, buildings or heavily wooded areas that typically interfere with regular, non-meshing radios. Another advantage is its ability to operate on the road among moving vehicles without fixed infrastructure," says Hunter.
Members of Sandia's Security Systems Analysis and Communications Systems departments collaborated to develop the TacNet Tracker, which uses the Motorola Mesh wireless radio infrastructure that is being installed at several Energy and Defense department sites to reduce the cost of new fiber optic network burial installations for fixed perimeter sensors and camera alarms. With that radio infrastructure in place, TacNet Tracker can act as a two-way, secure communications path into the fixed-site security networks from any number of mobile units.
TacNet and the TacNet Tracker can be tailored to particular missions. The security personnel responding to a VPED alarm can send data (e.g., messages, maps, photos) over a line-of-sight Mesh radio network, which is self-forming, self-healing and multi-hopping. Self-forming means that Mesh nodes automatically detect other nodes in their vicinity and form a network that is capable of passing digital data between nodes of the network. If necessary, multiple radio links (hops) are used to complete the data connection/transfer if a line-of-sight link is not available. Within the TacNet network, a connection is created automatically whenever a component (TacNet-equipped vehicle or TacNet Tracker) comes within line-of-sight of another component.
If a component becomes separated and line-of-site is lost, the remaining components "self-heal" the network by forming another path. While the security force could use a conventional radio to transmit a message over a hill using other radios, anyone could listen in. With TacNet, if a responder sends a message to a specific person on the other side of a hill, it is possible for other components on the path to relay but not read the message. Only vehicles/personnel on an access control list can exchange information, ensuring both flexibility and protection.
The field-tested TacNet Tracker already provides significant benefits for tracking mobile assets, such as personnel, vehicles, convoys of vehicles, shipping containers and temporary contractor vehicles. In a scenario for using TacNet Tracker in a deployable virtual PIDAS, the Blue Force (good guys) patrols the PIDAS perimeter (fixed or mobile), using the Tracker as the secure pipeline for the deployable sensors and assessment of the PIDAS. The Blue Force vehicles carry remote-operated weapon systems (ROWS) that interface with the Tracker's secure data pipe. The system for detecting the Red Force (bad guys), working in conjunction with Tracker and a shooting position locating technology, subtracts the locations of the Blue Force Tracker units, and then displays the shooting locations via a Tracker display. The displayed coordinates would be possible Red Force units. This information would then be transmitted to the troops or remote gun platforms to return fire. This system of deployed PIDAS sensors, tracking of Blue Force troops, tracking of the ROWS vehicles, and identification of the Red Force shooters quickly forms a deployable PIDAS with return-fire capabilities all in one secure, mobile network.
The deployable PIDAS could also incorporate the TacNet Tracker as a sensor data pipeline for ground and/or water-based sensors; for example, buoys could carry Trackers, rechargeable batteries and solar panels. In this case, the Tracker serves as the pipeline for the submerged sensors into the alarm control and display network and reports the sensor and detection data along with the GPS location of the buoy.
Loren Riblett, of Sandia's communications systems department and a developer of the Tracker, says that while the device was designed for increasing security situational awareness, "it is really a wearable mobile operations tool" to support command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance concepts without the military infrastructure burden.
According to Riblett, "Tracker can be used for tracking personnel, locating smoke-jumpers in forest fires, in mining operations, for vehicle convoy and site security, providing Baja race team updates, coordinating small seaport operations, organizing search and rescue operations, identifying the locations of hunting parties and even conducting the local town parade."
Margaret Lovell writes about Sandia National Laboratories for Innovation.
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