Airborne ubiquitous surveillance and monitoring

Abstract

The thesis research examines the emergence of wireless technology as a pragmatic baseline supporting the goals of the Department of Defense developing towards Network Centric Forces. Increased international attention to the field of surveillance has developed parallel to the desire to interconnect all possible friendly forces in military operations and the Global War on Terror (GWOT). Ubiquitous surveillance is accomplished by prototyping a network node that is then integrated on board of a military type unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Although the commercial off the shelf network solution itself is broadly deployed, little is known so far how to operate and manage an airborne surveillance network node. The author shows that the use of unmanned aerial vehicles for networking purposes is not only possible but also manageable, even with remote operation of the unmanned aerial vehicle. The documented experiments over three generations of prototypes give insight about possibilities of how network infrastructure independence for the purpose of surveillance can be reached.