Robert Schena
Communications are vital in regular circumstances—with business, professionals and family—but communications in military situations are critical, often a life or death situation. These very issues were addressed in Rome at the Network Centric Warfare Conference.
Addressing delegates today at the Network Centric Warfare Conference in Rome, Rajant Corporation CEO, Robert Schena, stressed that wireless mobility is the key to ensuring secure military communications.
Discussing the top communications challenges for today’s information-age warfare, Schena stated that military is unlike no other market in terms of the emphasis on a network’s requirements for mobility.
“Modern warfare requires wireless mobility since it is both mobile and network centric,” said Schena. “With information superiority being crucial to ensure the success of battlefield outcomes, and information assets and commands needing to be delivered wirelessly, networks must provide continuous communications to in-motion and stationary personnel, vehicles, and equipment, ensuring troops have always-connected, secure access to applications and information.”
Discussing the limitations of traditional networks, Schena noted the confines high latency places on satellite communications’ ability to fully support strategic and tactical missions, as well as the impact inadequate secure, mobile infrastructure has on connectivity between mobile personnel, vehicles and equipment.
“Throw in the time-consuming, complicated deployments in the midst of battlefield pressures, such as challenging terrain and changing operations, and it becomes clear that traditional networks are no longer reliable,” said Schena. “To provide field forces with the military-grade security with always-on connectivity and complete mobility that they need, existing infrastructure should to be leveraged and expanded with wireless mesh as a pathway to interoperability, speedier deployment, and lower maintenance costs.”
But not all mesh is equal, noted Schena, especially on a battlefield where mobility is paramount.
“Traditional mesh networks have various limitations, but kinetic mesh can morph as requirements evolve, providing the most mobile, fail-proof, high-performance, private wireless network,” he said.
Schena listed full redundancy and robust security, as well as on-the-fly forwarding of voice, video and data over the best path as other advantages of kinetic mesh, opposed to traditional mesh which limits the number of nodes, makes inefficient use of radio frequencies, and also needs to rely on a single infrastructure node – a potential point of failure.
“Rajant Kinetic Mesh™ networks use InstaMesh® in concert with BreadCrumb® nodes to form a robust private wireless networking solution that is simple, instantaneous, and fail-proof in diverse environments, creating the Living Network™,” he said. “They maintain connectivity as nodes move, and InstaMesh redirects packets over multiple frequencies to avoid interference or congestion.”
With a proven track record of performance in a number of high profile military programs of records to support evolved applications that are bandwidth-intensive and speed-dependent, Rajant networks enable military and civilian officials to see more, react faster and move freely since there are no constraints.
