Tactical Sensor Networks

The utility of common tactical sensors, relative to the challenge of enhancing warfi ghter situation awareness and understanding, is stressed in urban domains containing asymmetric threats. Two capabilities have been shown to be of great value, wide area surveillance and higher information content sensors. Recent achievements in the area of dense focal plane arrays have suggested that the development of small form factor wide-area surveillance imagers is tractable. Additionally, advances in the computational ability of power-effi cient processors will enable next generation smart tactical sensors to be fi elded. The combination of widearea sensors and smart narrow fi eld of regard sensors provide a much more relevant data front end for distributed threat inference engines.

The Office of Naval Research’s Tactical Sensor Network program is investing in a variety of sensors, both wide area and narrow field of regard, that together are able to produce the data needed to detect threat features. Developed sensors are networked, allowing threat vectors to be both better populated with better data and held for longer periods of time across larger areas. A variety of sensors across the electromagnetic domain are in development, as are algorithms to enable situational understanding at the sensor node. A distributed inference engine, informed by threat ontologies, is used to generate tactical warfi ghter warnings. Better mission aware interfaces between warfi ghter and sensors and data will greatly enhance the translation of data to actionable intelligence.

The Tactical Sensor Network Program will develop the sensors and supporting analysis algorithms required to enhance tactical warfighter situational awareness and understanding against the irregular and asymmetric threat.