IP Communications

Fortress Technologies, a provider of secure wireless solutions, announced that it is supporting a Wireless Reach-Back (WRB) project for the United States Marine Corps (USMC) Program Manager for Training Systems (PMTRASYS), in Orlando, Fla. WRB will provide wideband wireless capabilities in support of fixed and mobile users on USMC tactical training ranges, enabling them to pass critical information in a dynamic environment.

 

“Very simplistically, what we allow a government user to do is extend the reach of their network or establish a network in an area that doesn’t have fixed infrastructure or doesn’t have a cost-effective means of laying out wired infrastructure,” stated Janet Kumpu, President, Fortress Technologies.

 

Don Gunnell, Lead Project Engineer for the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Corona Division commented, “The goal was to take existing communication infrastructure and extend that communication link back to outer range resources and those range resources are both fixed and mobile sensors.”

 

The innovated part of the solution is that now soldiers can go from a one band-width to another under secure government protection. Fortress teamed with Luxul (News - Alert) Wireless, an innovator of patented high-performance wireless signal technologies, to enable the wireless signals to transmit over the 4.4 GHz band. Fortress’ Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) validated ES520 Secure Wireless Bridges were combined with Luxul Shock-WAV Frequency Translating Amplifiers (FTAs) to provide the secure wireless capability over the alternative spectrum.

 

Gunnell told TMCnet that the “NSWC Corona is heading out this weekend to put the final touches on the configurations and set-up of the WRB system. That involves us flying to each hill top and to each remote fixed sensor and doing configurations on the Fortress Technologies radio and troubleshooting any of the radio frequency links.”

 

Kumpu continued, “What we were able to successfully accomplish with the Wireless Reach-Back Program was…set up a wireless mesh network across that range to provide real-time access to...information that they were collecting during those exercises. So they do training and exercises out of these ranges and they want to collect a variety of different telemetry data as a means of analyzing and approving the way they train and being able to show the results of those exercises and feed that information back to the soldiers as they go through these different exercises.”

 

Don Gunnell and his team lead the implementation strategy and supported the accreditation for the Wireless-Reach Back Program. Prior to the WRB system being implemented there wasn’t a system in place, “if you were to travel out to the range, you would have voice communication but you wouldn’t have data communication. So we’re providing that data communication link across the 29 Palms training range,” the Marine base that is first to use the technology.

 

The bottom line of the WRB systems is that it further evolves the wireless communication technology for the war fighters.