Warfighters and others operating in tactical environments need reliable, real-time access to mission-critical information without the addition of (and weight of) multiple, special-purpose devices. But can commercial, handheld-computing technology be made effective for tactical environments?

In this experiment, we looked into whether service-oriented architecture (SOA) applies in a tactical network environment and, if it applies, how it can be implemented. We also sought to develop strategies to allow mission applications to continue to operate at sufficient quality-of-service (QoS) levels in tactical networks.

Tactical SOA Experiment Design

To test the use of SOA in tactical environments, the SEI designed an experiment to create architectural strategies, using service orientation, that work on commercial handheld devices (android-based smartphones) and can be adapted to build tactical applications. We evaluated the experiment according to these metrics: 256-bit AES encryption at line speed and acceptable video resolution at least 15 frames/second on a Wi-Fi network. Our underlying engineering decisions were to use

• UDP transport layer protocol; SOAP messaging protocol
  
• gSOAP engine on the CoT router-side and kSOAP (modified) on smartphone side
• network security: existing internet and wireless protocol WPA/WPA2 with pre-shared key
• application-level security: AES-256 bit encryption with WPA2 passphrase generation

The experiment was conducted at the Naval Postgraduate school. Data captured by an unmanned aerial vehicle was transmitted as cursor-on-target (CoT) messages over a mobile wave relay network, converted into SOAP-CoT messages, and displayed on Android Smartphones.

See the video here. A video of the smartphone client first shows the map background with resource icons indicating a UAV field of view projections. When these projections are selected, they show a picture in a picture (second half of video) of the video being broadcast from the UAV camera.

Results Regarding Tactical SOA and Use of Handheld Devices

The experiments showed the following: 

• A subset of SOA (using SOAP) is viable in tactical environments.
• Smarthphones provide multiple-use computing platforms, reducing the need for warfighters to carry several single-use devices in tactical environments.

Next Steps for This Tactical SOA/Handheld Computing Research

• Continue to participate in the USSCOM-NPS Field Experiment Cooperative.
• Deploy for Naval Special Warfare field trials (if possible).
• Implement a service discovery layer.
• Collaborate with other SEI research (e.g., cloud computing and Adaptive QoS).
• Create an infrastructure for tactical handheld solutions in the concept lab that can be leveraged by future research and prototypes.