Networked sensors: armor for the future force
John W. Gowens, John Eicke · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2001
The U.S. Army has embarked on an important campaign to field a lighter, more agile force, capable of being deployed in a fraction of the time currently required. The survivability of this force will depend more heavily on the use of integrated command and control capabilities with unsurpassed situational understanding for all levels of command. Arrays of small, low cost sensors will play a key role in detecting, locating, tracking, and identifying targets, particularly in areas where the terrain or other circumstances prevent traditional high performance sensors from providing critical information. Individual sensor types will provide modest performance but with a wide range of sensing modalities. When deployed in large numbers, the data fused from multiple sensing modalities will provide a detailed view of the battlespace over a wide area. A critical element necessary to deploy unattended ground sensor technology is the underlying communications and networking infrastructure. Communication networks will constitute the major challenge to making unattended ground sensors networks practical.