Coming up from November 1st through 3rd at the Baltimore Convention Center in Maryland is the Military Communications Conference, otherwise known as MILCOM, and in attendance will be Intelligent Automation, Incorporated (IAI), resident at Booth #4029.
IAI will be exhibiting their Radio Frequency Network channel Emulator/Simulator Tool, or RFnest™, family of products that facilitate the testing of new radio technologies in laboratory settings. IAI’s RFnest™ is the first, scalable, full mesh channel emulator in the market today and allows for as many as 96 physical radios to be networked within a realistic operational environment.
RFnest™ allows radios to be tested and evaluated in MIMO, SISO, SIMO, MISO or mesh configurations, across a broad Radio Frequency (RF) spectrum. By configuring various channel models that mimic real-life environments such as rural areas and urban canyons, users can create large test scenarios that recreate the communication characteristics experienced by operations involving dismounted soldiers, vehicle convoys, unmanned aerial vehicles, and airborne networks.
RFnest’s support of real radio/network nodes allows for large testing scenarios that involve myriad networked nodes with all nodes experiencing realistic channel response. The integrated RFview™ data display and visualization tools provide the user with a reliable and repeatable assessment of the communications protocols and network performance. RFview™ interfaces with third party channel modeling tools for specific channels of interest, as well as network emulation software including the Extendable Mobile Ad-hoc Network Emulator (EMANE) and the Common Open Research Emulator (CORE).
According to Dr. Vikram Manikonda, the President/CEO of IAI, as tactical wireless communication networks continue to expand and dominate the global Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) landscape, developing an effective and realistic testing environment for these emerging communications technologies remains an urgent need. The modular, scalable, and versatile, features of RFnest™ in terms of the number of ports, RF configurations, frequency bands, and the firm's RFview™ software, provides them this much needed capability.