INTEGRATION OF INTEROPERABLE ANDROID-BASED COMMAND AND CONTROL SYSTEMS TO CREATE MORE REALISTIC TACTICAL TRAINING

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the interoperability of Android mobile devices during live military training to model the dynamic nature of adversarial forces and enhance realism. The research explores the efficient and effective application of existing interoperability protocols and architectures to transfer and display tactical data to assist ground forces in achieving their training objectives. Specifically, to address some of the limitations of current training systems that do not support customization, a prototype of an application for Android devices is developed and tested. Consisting of a Mobile Entity Simulator and a Mobile Hit Actor (MHA), the developed prototype proved capable of allowing the devices to connect to a military communication system via Wi-Fi. Once connected, they could send packets to a command and control (C2) system using the distributed interactive simulation (DIS) protocol. Thus, the mobile device could mimic the presence of an arbitrary military unit at the device’s coordinates. Moreover, the MHA not only proved successful in registering detonation data but also played a corresponding sound to enhance realism. To prove the concrete benefits of the application will require further work. For this purpose, experiments should compare the results of live training with and without the use of the developed tools. In addition, the DIS protocol was used in this work; hence, future work should use the High Level Architecture for comparison.