Article was published back in December 2003
from Bradenton.com

JIM KRANE
Associated Press

The network is ideal because the user serves as the data transmitter!

NEW YORK - When bullets are flying, the last thing a soldier wants to hear is "the network is down."
So the Pentagon, about a decade ago, set out to design a wireless communications network that could survive a war.

One design that has emerged, in portable military communications gear used in Afghanistan and now in the Iraqi theater, is called "mobile ad-hoc" or mesh networking. It now appears poised to also link wireless gadgets in the civilian world.

Military planners value mesh networking because it's like their best troops: smart, flexible and quick. That's because users of the network are also transmitters. They relay its digital signal - voice, text, maps or imagery - to others.

In a mesh network there are no fixed "points of failure" like base stations and antennas that can be disabled by a bomb. Mesh networks' self-healing properties adjust themselves when users join, leave or move.

"The military really likes it," said Rick Rotondo, vice president of marketing at MeshNetworks, a start-up based in Maitland. "They parachute 50 guys into Afghanistan and they turn their radios on and they've got an instant network."'

In the civilian world, the technology could soon link fleets of buses or cars, or update traffic signals and messages on "smart" signs.

The Pentagon has been bent on improving battlefield communications since embarrassing wartime revelations in Grenada in 1983 - when soldiers used a pay phone to call for air support - and 1991 Operation Desert Storm, when troops barreling into Kuwait outran their communications networks.

Mesh networking capabilities have emerged in the military's latest battlefield radio, Raytheon Co.'s Enhanced Position Location Reporting System.

U.S. Army units training in Kuwait are also using a mobile command and control computer known as the FBCB2, which is capable of operating on mesh networks but currently uses satellites, said Timothy Rider, spokesman for the Army Communications-Electronics Command.

The command is also overseeing ITT Industries' development of the Soldier Level Integrated Communications Environment, a mobile computer with a headset display and microphone for foot soldiers.

SLICE is supposed to create mesh networks that handle voice communications while mapping whereabouts of soldiers and their companions.

The SLICE was the size of a backpack when the Army tested it in October. By the time it's released in 2005 or so, it will shrink to the size of a Palm organizer, said John Kirkwood, marketing manager for ITT's defense group.

"The military doesn't like to haul towers around with them," Kirkwood said. "They want a network that's as convenient as a cell telephone network but has none of the limitations, like the ability to eavesdrop and identify where the broadcast originates."

In civilian life, the military's mesh networks are being reconfigured.

One of the earliest expected uses will come in the automotive telematics industry, where an onboard computer might download software updates or MP3 music for a car radio. Analysts say those days are still years away.

"You'd only need a few access points in a whole city," said Allen Nogee, a wireless analyst with In-Stat/MDR. "The cars could bounce the signal from one to the next."



MeshNetworks' Rotondo said a Japanese automaker - he declined to say which one - bought the company's technology to create a network for onboard computers.

The company set up its own experimental mesh network in Maitland, using the gear it sells: PC cards, routers and access points that, when guided by the company's software, act as repeater-routers for mobile computers and handhelds.

The Army demonstrated MeshNetworks' communicators for police, fire and emergency responders in early December at its Signal Center at Fort Gordon, Ga.

The company has also sold its systems to the Viasys Corp., which develops "intelligent transportation networks" of linked traffic signals, signs, cameras and sensors.

Rotondo says the company's mobile configuration runs on a military wireless standard known as quad-division multiple access that is fast enough to stream audio or video to a moving airplane.

Other companies are developing similar products, including Intel Corp., Nokia, Mitsubishi Corp. and Deutsche Telekom, the latter two in a joint venture called Moteran Networks that seeks to create a mesh network among cars in Germany.

Mesh networking has its downsides.

First, with devices relaying messages for other users, "you're using someone else's battery life" to send your data packets, Nogee said. He doubted most folks would willingly donate battery life to strangers.

Second, there are eavesdropping issues. Data could be intercepted and unscrambled as they pass through a device, Nogee said. Encryption technology ought to handle the challenge, he predicted.

And mesh networks aren't valuable until they spread widely. For that to happen, users have to join before the network matures.

"No one's going to use it unless everyone has it," Nogee said. "But it doesn't work until everyone has it."