Cassidian wins innovation award
The system was placed instead into a fleet of Mini Cooper cars that took part in an exercise which demonstrated to leading technical experts how the system performs in an area where cellular communications such as mobile phones and TETRA radio (PMR) wirel
Cassidian, the security and defence division of EADS, has won the Telecommunications category Innovation Award at the annual Institute of Engineering & Technology gala ceremony for its work on Mobile IP Node.
This piece of network aware routing technology, the result of four years' development work, aims to improve the ability of military and emergency response services to communicate across a wide variety of operational scenarios.
The awards are judged by a panel of industry and academic experts and act as a platform for highlighting the best new engineering and technology innovations from across the world.
Michael Stevens, CEO Cassidian UK said, "I am delighted with this award, which highlights the ground-breaking nature of the research and technology capabilities within Cassidian UK and underscores our strategy to become one of the UK's leading providers of integrated solutions, differentiated by our innovative technology."
Earlier this week Cassidian presented the Mobile IP Node technology at the ASTRAEA (Autonomous Systems Technology Related Airborne Evaluation & Assessment) conference in London.
As part of the ASTRAEA programme Cassidian took up the challenge to develop an adaptive communications architecture that solves multiple issues. Firstly it allows the use of satellite communications in low Air Traffic Control (ATC) work load areas and reduces latency (delays) in high ATC work load areas. The system requires no "expert" technical intervention and automatically routes, formats and prioritises data to make the best use of available bandwidth, because not all data is equal - UAS mission updates are often critically important.
This is a world first - Mobile IP Node decides on the most appropriate medium and route to use based on a variety of factors including the geographical area, weather conditions or the bandwidth capacity of a network. The wireless technology is housed in a case smaller than a hard back book, weighs only 2 kg and can be fitted into any vehicle, not just UAS. In addition, the use of leading edge encryption technology incorporated into the kit means the data integrity is protected.
The project overcame the problem that to physically test the system on UAS would take multiple air vehicles and large distances to stretch the communications links and force multiple re-routing of data and voice transmission. The system was placed instead into a fleet of Mini Cooper cars that took part in an exercise which demonstrated to leading technical experts how the system performs in an area where cellular communications such as mobile phones and Tetra radio (PMR) wireless communications are non-existent.
Source: ConntingencyToday
